The Tom Phillips saga: Five fast days after four slow years

Saturday, 13 September 2025

In the end it happened quickly: a burst of gunfire on a dark country road, a cop critically injured and a missing child found.

Tom Phillips was dead. After shooting a constable multiple times — including in the head — the fugitive was shot by another officer who had raced to the scene, arriving only seconds later.

The confrontation was brief, brutal, and involved the very kind of violence that police had warned Phillips was capable of. When he proved he was, he’d been hiding for 1358 days, and the children he’d dragged along with him were aged a respective, and tender, 12, 10 and 9.

For Phillips it was over in an instant: the attempted murderer, bank robber, thief and “monster” brought down at last. But just as his death may have ended one chapter, it marks only the beginning of so many more. They began nearly a week ago.

Monday

It was 2.30am and a Piopio resident was watching a robbery take place. Two people wearing headlamps, farm clothing, and riding on a quad bike had broken into PGG Wrightson, they told police.

The description was a familiar one. Twelve days earlier Phillips had been caught on camera attempting to break into the Piopio Superette. After triggering an alarm only milk was taken but there was the quad, gumboots, camo gear and headlamps.

But just as this most recent sighting provoked an instant response from police, just how it then played out is still largely unknown to the public. What we know is that one officer, waiting near the intersection of Te Anga and Waipuna Rd, the main route back to Marokopa, laid road spikes. That was at about 3.20am, and minutes later Phillips hit them.

It was mid-morning when the press conferences began. At 11am deputy Police Commissioner Jill Rogers announced Phillips’ death and that police were making urgent inquiries to find the other children. An investigation into the shooting was under way, she said, and the constable who’d laid the spikes was operating on 'officer intuition'.

The officer was shot with a high-powered rifle and other firearms had been found on the quad. 'He was getting out of the vehicle and has fallen to the ground. He's taken cover back in the vehicle,' Rogers said, adding he’d been flown to Waikato Hospital in a critical condition.

At 3.30pm, with the sounds of the Eagle helicopter flying overhead, Rogers was back in front of the cameras, tense and grim, to say the missing children had yet to be found. They were believed to be alone in the bush and with only a few hours of daylight left “this must come to a conclusion now”.

She also provided an update on the injured officer, who had undergone the first of many surgeries and was back in for one on his eye. Rogers finished by saying that should anything happen during the evening, updates would be provided.

At 5.50pm she was back, announcing with “great relief” that the children had been found at a “very remote campsite” further up Te Anga Rd. Crucial information had been provided earlier in the morning by the child already in custody, and police had taken them into care.

'The children are well and uninjured, and they will be taken to a location this evening for medical checks.'

Monday’s last big news was of an urgent injunction, filed in court that evening on behalf of the Phillips family, preventing media, police and Oranga Tamariki from publishing certain details related to the case. The interim order would be heard in Wellington’s High Court on Thursday.

And that was the end of day one, or at least for those of us at home. New Zealand had one dead criminal, a critically injured police officer, and a family of long-missing children finally pulled from the bush. “I hope that wherever those kids are tonight, they’re warm, clean, and eating McDonalds,” someone wrote on social media.

Tuesday

Already, the aftermath. There are roadblocks, forensic tents, and investigators starting the slow work of piecing together not only what had happened on that dark stretch of road but everything leading up to it.

Questions about the police response had been in play from the get-go, not only from yesterday but right back when Phillips first absconded in September 2021. Today they ramp up.

Why was that first officer alone? Why has this saga dragged on for four years? How on earth did someone not do something?

Andy Connors, a retired King Country cop, can speak to at least some of that. Of his 33-year career - in which he estimates he used handcuffs twice - nine were spent as Piopio’s sole constable.

“You know there are other staff who’ll be deployed as needed, but the reality is you’re on your own. Sure, It’d be great if there were two of you but they’d have to double the number of cops in the country and that’s never going to happen.”

Country cops, he says, instead develop special wits and caution: constantly falling back on their training. “A lot of it is talking, using your mouth instead of force because that’s the way you’re going to stop something before it starts.”

As for the years of police holding back on trying to flush Phillips out, Connors says the King Country was the last bastion for Māoridom for a reason: the armed constabulary simply didn’t want to go there.

“There’s so much bush and scrub they’ll know you’re coming before you see them; once the police knew Phillips had firearms they had to rely on negotiations.

“It’s a shame how it ended but that was down to him. He had the chance to give up or run, and he’s chosen to fight.”

That’s a sentiment echoed by Police Commissioner Richard Chambers who flew back from Australia and fronted media, stressing that Phillips was both a “motivated offender with intent to kill” and no hero. No decent parent either.

“There could have been a different outcome, but he elected to take the action that he did, and the outcome is what it is. So no, no parent, no father, should ever behave like this with their children.”

Chambers’ message was clear: this was not the folk tale of a bushman outwitting authority, but the violent end of a criminal who’d repeatedly endangered lives. It was also a response to the rhetoric that had always been in play but had ramped up since Monday.

Tributes for Phillips, and not the wounded officer, are flooding social media: he was a “legend”, “real Kiwi battler”, a “father pushed too far”. Memes are dusted off, jokes recycled. It’s the outlaw myth retold, even as three children are in state care and one of their rescuers fights for his life in hospital.

Paul Spoonley, sociologist and expert on extremism and fringe movements, says the reaction was part of a growing and familiar pattern. After all, NZ has had a long history of romanticising anti-establishment figures.

“It’s become more of an issue post-Covid where the level of trust in police and government has gone down, and some people are looking for ‘heroes’ who reflect the ability to stand up to the authority - in this case the courts and police.”

For Spoonley, the folk-hero tributes were less about Phillips himself than the climate he appeared to move in: one of alienation and distrust.

“For these communities of thought, anti-1080 or anti-vaccine, Covid provided them with a larger audience and the online world provided them with the means of communicating to that larger constituency.

“Covid also provided them with common cause. It should be seen as a moment in our political history and trajectory which has significantly altered the connection between government and communities.”

Although Spoonley says we’re talking about relatively small, if strident, groups, the noise they generate is disproportionate to their size. Of course, they’re also targeting local authority elections to get their voices heard.

“There are alternative realities and parallel universes that have now bedded into our political and social environments. I don’t think it’s trivial.”

But while the myth-making played out online, the reality was anything but romantic: lives upended and now the long, slow work of rebuilding. For the children, Tuesday must have been only the second day of another awful challenge: learning how to live in a world, and childhood, that for four years had been stolen.

And for the injured officer, it also marked only the second day of a long recovery.

“RIP Tom Phillips,” some idiot wrote online, “forever an NZ hero.”

Wednesday

Booze bottles, chocolate wrappers, tarps and tyres: it’s photographs that define Wednesday.

Released by police, the images of makeshift campsites where Phillips had cowered strip any myth bare. Whatever story was being told online about a bushman’s freedom, the reality is right there: 24 bottles of Jack Daniels premix, a gas canister, six bottles of Mammoth iced coffee.

These are the leavings of a man some glorified for “living off the land”, but in truth had traded his children’s ordinary rhythms of school and friends for subsistence under plastic sheeting in the cold. Here it is, not legend but loss, and important proof for police.

“We are currently looking at a number of items at the site. Aside from the burglaries we are now able to link to Tom, it is apparent that he had outside help,” Detective Senior Sergeant Andrew Saunders says.

“Based on the way it’s been set up, and other information we’ve received, we don’t believe it’s been the main place they’ve been living for the last four years. We believe they’ve moved here only a number of months ago.”

Later, Waitomo District Mayor John Robertson says that for almost everyone in his community all that ever mattered was the children’s safe return.

“There won’t be surprise if we find out that help has been given to Tom Phillips, because those same questions from outside the area are also being asked within it.

“It’ll be a mystery for 99.9% of this community until the police come out with their findings.”

And today it’s announced that as Operation Curly has ended - finally wound up with the safe return of the missing children - another operation begins. This one to find and bring to justice those who have been helping Phillips.

“They should be shitting themselves,” posts someone on Reddit.

Also today we’re told it was Phillips’ eldest child who on Monday helped police find the other missing children. Remember; she’s all of a heartbreaking 12 years-old.

Thursday

After Tom Phillips shot a police officer, he was shot by another, then given first aid by police.

Today, four days later, the news is mostly about the news: what can’t be published and what already has been. It’s from the latter we learn more about Monday’s operation through audio of police radio communications obtained and reported by Stuff journalist Tony Wall who’s been following the case since the start.

We read and hear of what went on in those early hours: communications from an officer trailing Phillips with his lights off, relaying information to both the police communications centre and colleagues swarming to the area; warning that Phillips is armed, and giving directions about where he’s likely to emerge.

“Copy, I’ll perch up along there somewhere,” another officer says, on his way to that intersection.

Today, even ever so superficially, we’re also along for the ride. We know residents are phoned and asked if they’ve heard a quad, and that someone advises that officers should not approach. “We’re still gonna get Eagle to locate the party,” they say, and the helicopter is an estimated 25 minutes away.

We know about a query from the officer now arrived at the intersection: “Waipuna Rd is pretty narrow this end, any thoughts on spikes?”

“Ah … yes I suppose you could spike - that would be a good option,” replies someone else.

And finally, we know of the foreshadowing: “I’m just trying to find a spot to park up, it’s pretty narrow and windy here. I haven’t really got anywhere to hide, so I’m kind of just on the road at this stage.”

“Just put yourself in the best safe position you can,” someone tells him.

Then there’s two blown-out front tyres, the quad gone off the road, and the desperate call: “shots fired, shots fired.”

So back to being news about news, because now the story becomes the story. Deputy Commissioner Jill Rogers describes the use of the audio material as “grossly irresponsible”, Stuff stands by it, and on it goes.

As for that urgent injunction filed on Monday? All we can say is that it was heard in Wellington’s High Court and extended for a week.

But today, in a break from comments on social media to the ones made to actual media, we can report what Police Minister Mark Mitchell says about the thing at the centre of this all.

“He has kept them away from education. He has kept them away from medical support. He has taken them and used them as human shields in violent criminal offending, and he has put his daughter in harm’s way when he tried to kill a police officer.”

Philips is in no way, shape or form a hero, says the minister: “Quite the opposite — he’s a monster.”

Friday

The family of Tom Phillips are devastated he shot a police officer, an “innocent person doing their job”.

'We're absolutely gutted for this officer and their family … We hope that the officer can make a full recovery.'

Yesterday, a spokesperson for the Phillips family tells Radio New Zealand they had no knowledge of any members helping Phillips, and that the family had gone through four years of “pressure and scrutiny and media harassment”.

'The 100% focus and priority from Monday on is the children and their wellbeing moving forward.'

But while the end happened quickly on Monday, all the moving forward - for everyone - is likely to happen very slowly. There’ll be many private stories of reintegration and recovery, court hearings and arguments that may never be reported, and police investigations that will have to be.

And questions too. Today, five long days after “a monster” shot a cop, the most recent one comes from University of Auckland law professor Carrie Leonetti.

“Like a lot of people, [I’m wondering] how is it he ever had access to these children, certainly for the second abduction,” Leonetti said.

“I would want to know, what evidence [was put before the courts] about the potential risk Tom Phillips posed to those children, and what the Family Court did with that evidence?”