From bush camp to shoot-out: Fugitive Tom Phillips’ deadly last stand

Tuesday, 9 September 2025

Police have confirmed Tom Phillips was shot dead during a critical incident in Waitomo after firing on an officer with a high-powered rifle. His three children — Jayda, Maverick, and Ember — are all safe, and undergoing medical checks.

It was the outcome everyone feared - a cornered Tom Phillips opening fire on police, his children present. In the end, a police officer was critically injured, and Phillips was shot dead, his body left lying on the road on a cold Waikato morning. Tony Wall retraces his last hours.

Tom Phillips’ last stand played out on a typically foggy Waikato morning.

It appears he and one of his children - most likely his eldest, 12-year-old Jayda - have come out of their bush camp near Te Anga in the early hours of the morning and driven a stolen quad bike south along back roads to Piopio.

It takes just over an hour. It was probably the same route they’d taken a couple of weeks earlier when, according to police, they broke into the Piopio Superette, again in the early hours.

In Piopio, resident Kevin Wishnowsky, who lives behind the Honda dealership in the town, had risen at about 2.45am on Monday to watch the “ladies’ rugby” - the Black Ferns playing Ireland at the Rugby World Cup.

Suddenly, his Rottweiler, Bolt, went “apeshit”, barking crazily. He wouldn’t come back. Then a burglar alarm sounded.

Kevin Wishnowsky of Piopio was watching the women’s rugby when his dog went “crazy”.

Wishnowsky didn’t think much of it, assuming that it was a false alarm at the Honda shop, as often happens.

He went back to watching the rugby, oblivious to the drama playing out a few hundred metres away.

On the other side of SH3 in Kea St, Dianne Mortensen and her husband, who works for PGG Wrightsons, were awoken by a phone call.

It was an Australian number. They ignored it, thinking it must be a wrong number. They discovered later it was the alarm company calling to say there’d been a break-in at the Wrightsons depot just across the street.

Tom Phillips lies dead on Te Anga Road after exchanging fire with police after four years on the run. The quadbike he was on lies to the side of the road while the first police car on the scen shows bullet holes in the windscreen.

They went back to sleep.

Someone else called police to say two people on a quad bike, dressed in farm clothing and wearing head lamps, were breaking into Wrightsons.

Stuff understands the local police officer was one of those who responded.

Police say the quad bike was spotted at about 3.20am on Waipuna Rd, a windy, gravel road that Stuff identified last week as Phillips’ most likely escape route after the superette break-in.

A police car at the back of the PGG Wrightsons store in Piopio on Monday morning.

It eventually intersects with Te Anga Rd about 10km west of the Waitomo Caves.

Police laid spikes at that intersection, which brought the bike to a stop.

The first cop on the scene was shot at and was struck in the head. He fell to the ground and took cover.

Police used road spikes to stop the quad bike, before a shootout.

A second patrol unit arrived and fatally shot Phillips, bringing to an end an almost four-year saga.

Acting on instructions from the child at the shooting scene, police were later able to locate the family’s bush camp further along Te Anga Rd.

The other two kids, Maverick and Ember, were there, safe and well.

At the Phillips farm: ‘Just put yourself in our shoes’

Police had placed cordons on most of the roads in the area, but Stuff was able to reach Marokopa, where the Phillips family has a farm, using a narrow road that’s little more than a goat track.

We visited the Phillips farm and found Tom’s father, Neville, and brother, Ben, hard at work, loading supplies onto a quad bike: even when horror strikes a farming family, there are still chores that need doing.

The pair were understandably angry and upset - with reporters for their intrusions over the years, and with police for their handling of it.

“You don’t know what it’s like to be shafted by the cops several times,” Neville said. “Just put yourself in our shoes.” He told us to leave and never come back.

In Marokopa village itself, there was a feeling of sadness among residents that the story had ended in bloodshed.

Warren Keegan said he felt sad and upset when he heard Tom Phillips was dead (file).

“It was inevitable, really, but it’s a shock all the same,” said Gayle Keegan.

“What was the outcome ever gonna be? He wouldn’t give up, he wouldn’t come out. He obviously felt he had no other way to deal with it.

“It’s sad, it’s just left everybody flat. I feel sorry for his family. Even though he’s done what he’s done - he still has a family.”

Her husband, Warren, said he was upset when he heard Tom was dead.

“I find it a bit hard. I think he mucked up, he shouldn’t have fired a shot. If you fire at the police, they’ve got to shoot back, you know.

“I’d have sooner seen him alive than shot. He’s done nothing to us down here in this village.”