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The mother of the children who were previously on the run with their fugitive father, Tom Phillips, recently appeared in court. She faced charges of high-range drink driving, allegedly being more than three times over the legal limit.
Phillips was killed last week during a police shootout while escaping on a quad bike with his eldest daughter, Jayda, who is 12 years old. Jayda later helped police locate her younger siblings at their hidden bush camp.
Hours later, Phillips’ estranged partner, Catherine ‘Cat’ Christey, 46, faced a New Zealand court on the drink-driving charge.
In August, Christey was pulled over by police on a road close to the secluded camp where Phillips and their children were staying near the west coast of New Zealand’s North Island.
Police alleged she had a blood alcohol level of 0.174, New Zealand Media and Entertainment reported.
The legal blood alcohol limit in New Zealand is 0.05, with anything over 0.15 categorized as high range, carrying a maximum penalty of three months imprisonment or a fine of $4,500.
Christey was ordered to attend court on September 8, the same day Phillips was shot dead by police.
It is believed that Christey is still awaiting a reunion with her children—Jayda, 12, Maverick, 10, and Ember, 9—after Phillips took them in 2021 and disappeared.
The New Zealand mother, who shares children with the late fugitive Tom Phillips, faced court over high-range drink driving. She appeared just as police completed their search for her missing children following her ex-husband’s demise.
Catherine Christey (pictured above with kids Maverick, Ember and Jayda) was allegedly drink driving on a road around 50km west of Tom Phillips’ secret forest camp
Cat Christey was recently working as a farmhand just 200m from where police shot dead her ex-husband on his stolen quad bike (pictured on the side of the road, right, after the shooting)
Christey was ordered to return to court next month during last week’s brief hearing in Te Kūiti District Court, 80km south of Hamilton on New Zealand’s North Island.
The charge alleged that on August 2 this year, she drove with a high-range alcohol level on the Tauraroa Valley Roadd at nearby Waimahora.
The location, close to Christey’s home in rural Ōtorohanga, is 50km west of where Tom Phillips’ camp was later found, on the eastern edge of the Tawarau Forest.
A sighting just south of Te Kūiti in February, when pig farmers filmed an adult and three children walking in camouflage clothing through farmland, was almost definitely Phillips and his children.
Coincidentally, Christey had been working for farmers Clive and Sandra Morgan about 200m from where Phillips was shot dead.
Their daughter, Maya Morgan, was among the local witnesses who were woken up by the sound of gunfire early on September 8 as Phillips exchanged gunfire with cops.
Christey worked there for the past 12 months as a gorse sprayer on their Waitomo farm, where the plant is considered an invasive weed.
NZME reported the Morgans had high praise for Christey’s work ethic during the years she had spent without her children.
Jayda, 12, helped police find the bush camp where her younger siblings, Maverick, 10, and Ember, 9, were found and told police what to say to gain their trust
Tom Phillips (left) was shot dead by police on the same day Cat Christey (right) was appearing in court on a drink-driving charge
They described Christey – who is also a champion sheep shearer and wool handler – as ‘a good lady, very strong, physically, very normal and intelligent’.
Phillips had evaded discovery for three years and nine months in the forested terrain of the vast Waikato region before being gunned down in last week’s deadly shootout.
He had survived by periodic but increasing raids on shops in the King Country region, becoming more ‘brazen and blasé’, said police.
On what would be his final robbery, Phillips spent almost 30 minutes rummaging through goods at farming supplies store PGG Wrightson in the village of PioPio, despite setting off its alarm.
Police were alerted and as Phillips and Jayda fled north on their quad bike loaded with pig feed, police laid road spikes further up their expected escape route
It disabled the quad bike before Phillips fired a high-powered rifle, hitting one officer in the head and striking his patrol car four times.
Police returned fire, and Phillips was shot dead.
Police got Jayda to lead them to Maverick and Ember at the outlaw family’s bush camp and the children were then taken in by NZ childcare authority, Oranga Tamariki.
Along with an accomplice, Phillips had survived his years on the run by periodic but increasing raids on shops, becoming more ‘brazen and blasé’
One of the secret bush camps in the vast Waikato region on the west coast of NZ’s North Island where Tom Phillips hid with his children for almost four years
The children remain in official care.
Leading criminal psychologist Dr Tim Watson-Munro has expressed concern about the children and their repatriation with their mother after years of no education, no interaction with others, and a view of the world shaped by their fugitive father.
‘It’s been four years not four days, and they’ve had to survive harsh conditions,’ he told the Daily Mail.
‘They are all getting to the age of 11/12, when you move into formal cognitive thinking and will start to think in more profound ways about their circumstances and wonder about their mother.
‘Who knows what they’ve been told about their mum, like, ‘she didn’t want you’, just to weaken her position.
‘It’s been a long time at a critical moment in those children’s development. Their objective reality would be a warped view of the world.
‘Part of the equation is how much the children have been indoctrinated by their father, and we don’t know.
‘They have been living like castaways, without being educated or socialised as far as we know.
Pig farmers shot footage of an adult and three children walking through farmland in February this year, just seven months before father Tom was killed in a police shootout
‘That stuff is critical in kids’ development to learn to problem-solve and become social beings.
‘Their father is alienating them from others, and their mother is a distant memory.’
