A man who had been on the escape with his three children in New Zealand’s desert for almost four years has been shot and killed by the police force.
Tom Phillips, who vanished with his children in late 2021, had evaded capture despite a nationwide search and multiple sightings over the years.
The December 2021 disappearance of Phillips and his children now about 9, 10 and 11 years old, confounded investigators for years as they scoured the densely forested area where they believed the family was hiding.
The father and children were not believed to ever have traveled far from the isolated North Island rural settlement of Marokopa where they lived, but credible sightings of them were rare.
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Tom Phillips has not yet been officially identified, but it is believed by authorities that he was the man shot and killed.
News has it that police officers were attending to a robbery report at a commercial property at Piopio, a small town in northern New Zealand where Philip and one of his children were spotted riding a quad bike.
Police officers then gave chase before laying road spikes to stop them. The bike hit the spikes and went off-road.
The Deputy Police Commissioner, Jill Rogers, said in an interview that the police were met with gunfire upon arrival at the scene.
The first ever attending officer at the scene was shot in the head, and is in a critical condition.
A second patrol unit then engaged Phillips, who was shot and died at the scene. While the body had not been formally identified at the time of the announcement, police were confident it was Phillips.
Rogers again noted that, the other two children were found later in the day at a remote campsite in dense bush. All three children are unharmed.
The child he was with, who has not been identified, had provided “crucial” information that helped them locate Phillips’ two other children later in the day.
