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WELLINGTON – New Zealand authorities failed to act on prior warnings that a man who went on the run with his children for four years had a stash of guns and might kidnap them, an inquiry into the case found on Tuesday.
Tom Phillips was shot dead by police in September 2025 after nearly four years on the run with his three children in the rolling hill country of the North Island’s Waikato region.
He had eluded capture by setting up several camps in dense bush, despite several sightings by members of the public and on CCTV.
A report released on Tuesday into the authorities’ handling of the case found that a number of red flags had been raised about Phillips before the kidnapping – the second time he had disappeared with his children.
“The harm caused by Tom Phillips isolating the children from family, friends and society was underplayed, minimised or overlooked by agencies for significant periods,” the report found.
“Our agencies did not take all practical steps to protect you,” government minister Louise Upston told his children.
“For that we are deeply sorry.”
The 211-page report examined the period from before the children were taken in December 2021 to the moment they were recovered after the deadly shootout in September last year.
Phillips first disappeared with his three children in September 2021 for 18 days.
He abandoned his vehicle on a beach below the high-tide mark, and the report said police believed “Tom Phillips had staged his and his children’s death”.
When he emerged from the bush 18 days later, he was charged with wasting police resources.
Police at the time were “seriously concerned that he might take the children away again”, the report said – but those fears were not passed on to the Ministry for Children.
They also failed to identify and seize his firearms after he lost his licence around the same time, the report said.
“Those additional steps could have contributed to recovering the children sooner,” it found.
In the two months before Phillips took the children again, social workers also ignored concerns raised by their older step-siblings.
One specifically asked whether the agency “would be held responsible if the children went missing again”.
The other provided an affidavit to the agency that was never read.
A ministry supervisor admitted that, had they read the statement, they “would have challenged Tom” and that it “read terribly”, the report found.
Ministry of Children chief executive Amanda Malu admitted the report was “difficult and at times harrowing reading”.
“We did not listen in the way we should have, and this family deserved better from us.” –AFP