A fugitive father who had been hiding for years with his three children in the dense New Zealand wilderness is believed to have been shot dead during an armed confrontation with police responding to a break-in, police stated Monday.
An officer was additionally wounded in the confrontation after being shot in the pinnacle, police stated.
“The formal identification has yet to take place but we believe him to be Tom Phillips,” Acting Deputy Commissioner Jill Rogers informed reporters on Monday.
One of the children was with Phillips on the time and is in police custody. An enormous search is now underway for the remaining children.
Thomas Callam Phillips vanished with his children in December 2021, and regardless of a number of sightings, appeals for assist, and a police search, the household’s location had remained a thriller.
Police imagine they have been residing off-grid, with the daddy utilizing his survival abilities to feed, shelter and dress his children.
Early Monday native time police have been known as to stories of a break-in at a farming good retailer in the Poipoi, a city of lower than 500 folks in the western Waikato district in the North Island of the nation, close to the place Phillips is believed to have been hiding out.
Police have been alerted to a four-wheeled farm bike with two folks on it leaving the scene on a gravel street and arrange street spikes on at a close-by intersection.
“The quad bike has run over the spikes. The two occupants have been on that bike, and it has come to a rest on this rural road. A short time later, the first attending police officer at that scene has come across that stopped quad bike and been confronted by gunfire at close range,” Rogers stated.
The officer was struck in the pinnacle and took cowl. When one other policer arrived on the scene, they shot at Phillips.
“A second person was located at the scene, and multiple firearms were located on and around the quad bike,” stated Rogers.
The injured officer has been airlifted to Waikato Hospital and bear surgical procedure.
Rogers stated finding the opposite two children was a precedence.