{"id":6980,"date":"2023-08-04T05:23:45","date_gmt":"2023-08-03T17:23:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=6980"},"modified":"2023-08-04T05:23:45","modified_gmt":"2023-08-03T17:23:45","slug":"top-cop-on-sightings-of-marokopa-man-tom-phillips-missing-with-3-kids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=6980","title":{"rendered":"Top cop on sightings of Marokopa man Tom Phillips missing with 3 kids"},"content":{"rendered":"

Police say they have discovered Tom Phillips, who went bush with his three young children and has been evading police for 18 months, has been disguising himself with the use of things like masks.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, police revealed there had been\u00a0three credible sightings of Phillips<\/a>\u00a0in the Waikato region on Wednesday, but there had been no signs of the children – Jayda, Maverick and Ember.<\/p>\n

Inspector Will Loughrin told\u00a0Checkpoint\u00a0<\/em>police were able to establish he had been disguising himself after a person who recognised Phillips in Hamilton contacted them.<\/p>\n

“We’ve followed that line of inquiry and have been able to identify him in Te Awamutu earlier in the day as well as the K\u0101whia incident later that night,” Loughrin said.<\/p>\n

“What our teams are starting to discover from the CCTV that we are reviewing is that it’s clear that Tom has changed his appearance and he’s trying to disguise his face from the general public,” he said.<\/p>\n

“We’re working through that information so that we can provide the public with accurate information on that, but again [he has been] concealing his identity through wearing a face mask and a number of other means.”<\/p>\n

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<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The 36-year-old was seen driving a stolen ute which\u00a0Checkpoint\u00a0<\/em>understands was spotted by locals, who then recognised Phillips behind the wheel and chased him.<\/p>\n

He had been seen in the brown\/bronze 2003 Toyota Hilux flat-deck ute in Te Awamutu early Wednesday afternoon and later that day at Bunnings in Te Rapa.<\/p>\n

“What we’re currently doing is working through those movements to try and establish where he’s been and whether he’s had any contact with anyone along the way,” Loughrin said.<\/p>\n

Despite a police search, including the deployment of an Eagle helicopter, Phillips and the vehicle have not been found.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Police say they have discovered Tom Phillips, who went bush with his three young children and has been evading police for 18 months, has been disguising himself with the use of things like masks. On Thursday, police revealed there had been\u00a0three credible sightings of Phillips\u00a0in the Waikato region on Wednesday, but there had been no […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":6981,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6980"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6980\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6982,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6980\/revisions\/6982"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}