New Zealand fugitive father shot dead by police after 4-year manhunt

A New Zealand man who evaded authorities with his three children in remote countryside for nearly four years was shot and killed by a police officer on Monday, law enforcement said.

The December 2021 disappearance of Tom Phillips and his children – now about nine, 10 and 11 – 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 travelled far from the isolated North Island rural settlement of Marokopa where they lived, but credible sightings of them were rare.

Phillips had not been formally identified, New Zealand’s Acting Deputy Police Commissioner Jill Rogers told reporters in the city of Hamilton on Monday, but authorities believed he was the man killed. His relatives confirmed his death to local news outlets.

A police officer was shot in the head and critically injured during a confrontation with Phillips after he robbed an agricultural supplies store early on Monday morning, Rogers said. A child with Phillips at the time of the burglary was taken into custody.

The officer was undergoing surgery at a hospital. Further surgeries were expected.