Fugitive father who has been on the run with his children for four years was shot by police after an attempted burglary of a building in Piopio. Police are now searching for two of his missing children
Full report: Tom Phillips shot dead after attempted burglary, NZ police confirm
Police have not yet located the children of Tom Phillips, acting deputy commissioner Jill Rogers said in a press conference on Monday afternoon.
“We have children we believe are unaccompanied in the bush and it is our priority to locate them.”
Specialist teams, including about 50 staff and the armed offenders squad, were out in force to locate the children, Rogers said.
We can’t speculate as to whether they have assistance with them or not.
Rogers said there were about three hours of daylight left.
Tom Phillips came from a farming family in New Zealand’s Marokopa – a tiny coastal settlement of fewer than 100 people that became inextricably linked with his story.
Before Phillips disappeared with his three children in 2021, many New Zealanders would have struggled to pick it out on a map, as Eva Corlett writes. It is a quiet, isolated settlement in Waikato, two hours’ drive from the nearest city, Hamilton.
The remoteness of the landscape frustrated police attempts to locate Phillips, and the question of how he concealed himself and his children and survived in the harsh terrain puzzled the nation, leading to speculation he may have had assistance.
Corlett’s feature story on how the case unfolded before today’s fatal shooting continues:
Phillips’ lengthy disappearance was preempted by an earlier – albeit shorter – stint where he went bush with his children. In September 2021, the four were reported missing and his ute was found abandoned along the Marokopa shoreline, resulting in a major search operation across land and sea.
Nineteen days later, Phillips and the children walked into his parents’ farmhouse just outside Marokopa. Phillips claimed he had taken his children on an extended camping trip in dense bush in an effort to clear his head. He was charged with wasting police time and resources.
But fewer than three months later, the four were reported missing again and when Phillips failed to show for a January court appearance, a warrant was issued for his arrest.
You can read the full feature here:
Here are some of the latest pictures coming in from the North Island area where Tom Phillips was killed early this morning in a shootout with police.
Luxon said what unfolded today was a “sad and absolutely tragic event”.
“This is not what anybody wanted to happen today and I think that is … a consistent feeling from from everybody across New Zealand,” the prime minister said.
We’re used to seeing these stories from other parts of the world, but not here in New Zealand. And it’s certainly a very sad and tragic day.
Prime minister Christopher Luxon said the police’s years-long investigation into the disappearance of Tom Phillips would warrant inquiry.
“I think there will be a series of questions to ask in due course, but today just isn’t that day.
Today is a day where we are … thinking and praying for a fallen police colleague. We are also making sure that those children can be found as quickly and as safely as possible.
Prime minister Christopher Luxon says the whole of New Zealand is anxiously waiting for the children of Tom Phillips to be found.
Luxon told media on Monday afternoon that this morning’s events “are not how anyone would have wanted this to end”.
I doubt there is a New Zealander who has not followed, to some extent, the story of the abduction of the children, of whom there have been only intermittent sightings since December 2021.
Luxon said police were devastated by what has happened to their colleague but were focusing on finding the children.
The December 2021 disappearance of Tom Phillips and his three children confounded investigators for years as they scoured the densely forested area where they believed the family was hiding.
The family was not believed to have ever have travelled far from the isolated North Island rural settlement of Marokopa where they lived, but credible sightings of them were rare, as the Associated Press reports.
The farm supplies store Phillips targeted this morning is in a small town in the same sprawling farming region of Waikato, south of Auckland, as the settlement of about 40 people from where he and his three children vanished.
Police believed Phillips had help concealing his family and some residents of the isolated rural area expressed support for him. A reward of NZ$80,000 and an offer of immunity from prosecution was offered for information about the family’s whereabouts last June but was never paid.
Here’s footage we’ve just published of acting deputy commissioner Jill Rogers telling reporters what happened as fugitive father Tom Phillips was shot dead during a shootout with police this morning after a reported store robbery in Piopio.
That concludes the press conference. Acting deputy commissioner Jill Rogers said police would alert media to any major updates throughout the evening, should they occur.
The mother of the children, Cat, is being kept informed of the situation, acting deputy commissioner Jill Rogers said.
However, Rogers said that to her knowledge, Cat had not been reunited with the child taken into custody today.
The constable who was injured in the incident with Tom Phillips this morning had commenced the first of many surgeries, Jill Rogers told the press conference.
“He’s gone back in for further surgery this afternoon on the injuries to his eye, and he will remain in Waikato hospital for some time to come, having those injuries tended to,” the police acting deputy commissioner said.
His family and his nearest are with him, and he’s been well supported as is his family.