New Zealand police said Tuesday they are piecing together how a fugitive father and his three children survived for years concealed in dense bushland after an early-morning shoot-out on Monday left the father dead and his children recovered.
The incident ended a search for Tom Phillips, who vanished from the rural Waikato region with the children in December 2021. Phillips was shot and killed by police after a confrontation following an alleged robbery at a farming supplies store in Waitomo on Monday. A police officer who was shot at close range during the incident has undergone multiple surgeries and is expected to survive, authorities said. One child who was with Phillips at the time was taken into custody and later helped officers locate a makeshift campsite where the other two children were found.
Police released photographs of the final campsite showing soda cans, tires, a metal container and camouflaged belongings; officers said the site appeared likely to be a temporary location and lay within terrain that had been searched previously. Guns were recovered at the scene. "It's highly likely that we've been very, very close," Police Commissioner Richard Chambers told reporters, saying investigators will now try to "put the puzzle together" of how the family lived and avoided detection for so long.
Investigators have long believed Phillips and the children remained in the general area around the tiny settlement of Marokopa, population about 40. Despite a sizeable reward and repeated searches, no one reported the family or revealed their whereabouts. Police said they will seek to identify "anybody who may have been helping Mr. Phillips," and that as patrols increased they grew more convinced the family had assistance to remain concealed.
Phillips's disappearances date back before December 2021. In a separate incident three months earlier, his truck was found on a beach near his home and authorities feared the family had been swept out to sea; the family emerged from the forest 17 days later, saying they had been camping. Phillips was charged with wasting police resources but absconded with the children before he was due to appear in court. He did not have legal custody of the children at the time of the disappearances, authorities said.
Phillips was later wanted in connection with an armed bank robbery in 2023 in which he was allegedly accompanied by one of the children and apparently shot at a member of the public while fleeing. He was also shown on CCTV committing multiple break-ins to steal supplies, authorities said, most recently in August.
Officials declined to disclose details of the children's condition or their precise whereabouts after their recovery, saying child protection agencies are handling their care. A High Court judge on Monday issued a temporary injunction barring officials and news outlets from disclosing certain details of the case. "They have seen and been exposed to things that children in our country should not be," Police Minister Mark Mitchell said, calling the circumstances "very complicated" and noting a careful, staged approach to the children's recovery.
The case has divided opinion locally and online; some residents of Marokopa and supporters on social media had expressed sympathy for Phillips. Commissioner Chambers rejected any suggestion that Phillips was a hero, saying, "No one who does this to children, no one who unleashes high-powered rifles on my staff, is a hero, simple as that."
Police said forensic work and a broader inquiry are under way to determine the full sequence of events, whether others aided Phillips and the children, and to assemble the evidence around the years the family spent living in the remote countryside.