New Zealand authorities reported that the man who had avoided officials after taking his three children four years ago in the remote countryside was fatally shot by a police officer on Monday.
The individual in question is Tom Phillips, who disappeared in December 2021 with his children, who are now nine, 10, and 11 years old, avoided authorities for years. They never found the man and the children, even after scouring the densely forested area where they believed the family was supposedly hiding.
Missing Man and Children
Officials believe that the family did not travel far from the isolated North Island rural settlement of Marokopa, where they lived. However, credible sightings of the missing people were relatively uncommon.
New Zealand's Acting Deputy Police Commissioner, Jill Rogers, said that Phillips has not been formally identified in the case. However, authorities believe that he was the man whom the police officer killed on Monday. The individual's relatives confirmed his death to local news outlets, according to Yahoo News.
Read more: Guatemalan Children Speak Out About Traumatic Efforts by Trump Administration To Deport Them
The police officer involved in the incident was said to have been shot in the head as well and is considered critically injured. The confrontation between the two occurred after the suspect robbed an agricultural supplies store. The man was said to have been with a child at the time of the burglary, who was taken into custody.
The law enforcement personnel were reportedly undergoing surgery at a hospital, and further surgeries are expected to be conducted. Officials said that the whereabouts of the remaining two kids are still unknown.
A Fatal Encounter
Rogers said that the children who were with Phillips are believed to be unaccompanied in the bush, noting that it is their priority to locate the kids. She added that specialist teams, including roughly 50 staff and the armed offenders squad, were sent out to find the missing children, The Guardian reported.
Police believe that Phillips lived with the three children off-grid, noting that he used his survival skills to feed, shelter, and clothe the kids. When authorities initially responded to reports of a burglary in Piopio, a four-wheeled farm bike with two people was spotted leaving the town on a gravel road.
Law enforcement personnel gave chase to the vehicle as road spikes were set up near an intersection roughly 30 kilometers down the gravel road. Rogers said that the quad bike later ran over the spikes, and it came to a rest on the rural road, as per CNN.
