Police have been unable to find Marokopa fugitive Tom Phillips after the most recent suspected sighting, but say they are making progress.
Until Thursday, Phillips and his three children Jayda, now 11, Maverick, nine, and Ember, eight, had not been seen together since 12 December 2021.
A video captured by hunters north of Awamarino on Thursday showed a man followed by three children in wet-weather gear carrying camouflaged backpacks. The group could be seen trekking through rough, overgrown terrain before disappearing behind a hill.
But it apparently took police several hours to respond.
Police said on Monday they were responding to a "credible sighting" of fugitive Phillips and his children on 3 October in a patch of bush off Coutts Road.
Palmerston North businessman John McOviney said his 16-year-old grandson was one of the hunters who saw Phillips.
A video his grandson took about 7pm last Thursday night showed a man and three children carrying backpacks.
"They saw this guy and the three kids walking in front of them, about 20 or 30 metres away," McOviney told RNZ.
"They talked to one of the children... They said 'who knows we're here?' It was a bit of a short conversation."
McOviney's grandson recorded a video of the group as they left.
A screenshot from a video appearing to show Tom Phillips and his children. Photo: Supplied / John McOviney
"It was pretty conclusive," he said.
"The father, he had a big beard. The kids were all rugged up, they had packs on their backs and they were masked up so, you know, they didn't really want to be confronted at all."
Phillips appeared to be carrying a gun, "so [the hunters] were, rightfully so, quite circumspect in terms of engaging".
Police took several hours to respond, McOviney claimed.
"The police didn't come out until the next morning," he said.
"There was a big contingent of 30 or 40 police out there, a helicopter and all that sort of stuff... [But] by then it had been about 12 hours since they saw them, so they were obviously quite a way away by then."
A Google maps screenshot showing the location of a sighting of fugitive Marokopa father Tom Phillips and his children Jayda, Maverick and Ember in October 2024. Photo: Google Maps
Detective Inspector Andrew Saunders said the sighting had opened a positive line of inquiry.
McOviney was convinced the man in the video was Phillips.
"I would say 99.9 percent it's Tom Phillips and his kids, it would definitely be them."
Police said officers were dispatched to the Marokopa area following the sighting and searched for three days.
Part of the search phase included air support from the Police Eagle helicopter and a Royal New Zealand Air Force NH90 helicopter, but "nothing of significance" was found, they said.