A local man is charged with first-degree murder after a cab driver was killed on a secluded Whitehorse road early Saturday evening.

A motorist passing by on Range Road called 911 at 6:50 p.m. to tell the RCMP that a male cab driver was being assaulted on the side of the road near the Mountain View Golf Course.

By the time officers arrived, the 5th Avenue Taxi driver was dead from his injuries, Whitehorse RCMP spokesman Sgt. John Sutherland said in a media briefing Sunday morning.

Police aren't saying if a weapon was used to kill the cab driver.

Though they say the two men knew each other, police aren't saying if the attack was drug-related or a personal dispute.

'We don't believe this was a random attack,' Sutherland said.

A little more than a half-hour after the 911 call, a police officer driving up Range Road to help with the investigation came across their suspect on the side of the road.

The man was arrested and held for court held on Sunday evening.

The Yukon RCMP's M-Division, which is heading up the investigation, is releasing no further details, citing a publication ban on evidence presented at the bail hearing. That hearing has not yet taken place.

Michael Dale Hamilton, 23, of 75 Takhini Trailer Court, was scheduled to be back in court earlier this afternoon to set a date for his bail hearing in the Yukon Supreme Court. Bail hearings for murder charges must be held in the superior court rather than at the territorial level.

Hamilton is charged with the first-degree murder of Brian Russell Wheldon, a local resident who'd been working for 5th Avenue Taxi about two years.

Wheldon had also worked for Global Taxi Service and the now-defunct Co-op Cabs, and has been employed as truck driver in the past.

The cabbie always worked the night shift, 5th Avenue manager Marica MacDonald said this morning.

'We're just kind of doing our little grieving thing here and trying to figure out what's going on,' MacDonald said.

Though the RCMP are still trying to track down Wheldon's relatives Outside, the local cab companies have lost a member of their family.

'We're all one big family up here, the cab companies,' MacDonald said. 'Kind of lost one of your own kind of thing.'

An easy man to get along with, Wheldon was always at work on time and ready to go.

'Here to do his job, liked his job.

'He was always chatting up a storm,' MacDonald said. 'He liked to strike up a conversation with anybody, make you feel as comfortable as possible.'

One idea that's come up among local cabbies since Wheldon's death is to speak out publicly about just what sort of dangers cab drivers face on a daily and nightly basis.

The format that would take is still very much up in the air, said MacDonald, who added she's been in the cab industry for quite some time, though not behind the wheel of a taxi.

'I personally think it's quite dangerous because you never know what anybody could do,' she said. 'And they're (customers) right there. It's not like there's a big space between you and everybody else.

She's seen cases before of taxi drivers being attacked, MacDonald said.

'Not only physically, but there's a lot of verbal kind of abuse out there too, and you never know when it'll escalate from verbal to physical.'

An autopsy has been ordered to formally determine the cause of Wheldon's death.

Wheldon had been driving 5th Avenue Taxi's van when he was assaulted.

Police officers arriving at the scene found his body close to the van on the ground, Sutherland said Sunday.

He said then that it was 'still part of the investigation' whether the suspect had been a passenger in the van.

Police cordoned off Range Road from the three-way stop at Wann Road in Porter Creek to the Northlands Trailer Park at the other end of the road, and a search was begun.

Along with most of the Whitehorse RCMP patrol officers on duty, M-Division major crimes officers and the police service dog pitched in to search the wooded area for their suspect.

At 7:30 p.m., officers came across the suspect on the road and arrested him approximately one kilometre from the murder scene.

Major crimes and forensic identification officers continue to look into the killing.

Wheldon's death is the first homicide in Whitehorse since July 2001, though it's the fourth murder charge in the territory in less than a year.

Though they've had numerous witnesses come forward already, police are asking that anyone who may have witnessed the altercation near the 5th Avenue Taxi van on Range Road Saturday evening to call them at 667-5555.