FEATURE: Constable's death still painful 10 years on

KATHY WEBB
Twenty five-year-old Constable Glenn McKibbin bled to death as he lay on the road beside his car, a single bullet from a Ruger .223 rifle lodged in his spine.
Forty three-year-old Terrence Thompson, the man who had fired the bullet, drove a small distance up the road in his old Falcon station wagon, wheeled around and cruised slowly and quietly back to where Mr McKibbin lay, to have another shot at him. He fired two more bullets, which hit the side of the patrol car, then he disappeared off into the countryside.
It was an unbelievable act of random violence by a man who had decided the world was against him, and it was time to take revenge.
The fact that Thompson had gone to Flaxmere to evict the owners from a house he had once owned, and was prepared to shoot them if they resisted, was bizarre. The fact he selected young Glenn McKibbin as his victim instead, was pure chance.
Mr McKibbin was on patrol duty about 10.30am when he stopped a motorist in Margate Avenue and got out of his car. He was speaking to the driver when Thompson drove up and fired a hunting rifle at him.
The bullet went through Mr McKibbin's hard-covered notebook, then his stomach, then hit his spine.
The Hunt family in nearby Yarmouth Road heard the first gunshot then Mr McKibbin's scream. "Arrrrrgh, I've been shot."
Alan Hunt and his two young daughters rushed to his aid. Mr Hunt could see immediately that Mr McKibbin was in a bad way, and yelled to his wife to call an ambulance.
He was unprepared for what happened next, as he bent over the dying Mr McKibbin.
"A couple of times I thought he was dead but then I'd hear him groan again.
"My two children were standing alongside me and next thing this car just quietly pulls up, which I didn't take a lot of notice of.
"The next thing there was the sound of a rifle shot. I looked up to see this guy in the car pointing the barrel at us again, so I screamed to the kids to head for cover, and I shot off around the back of the patrol car.
"He let rip with another shot then, and I shot off inside.
"At this stage he took off again and I ended up back outside with the constable."
Mr Hunt then saw bullet holes in the side of the car.
"It (the bullet) was obviously not very far in front of my nose."
A massive, nine-week manhunt followed as Thompson went bush, constantly eluding his would-be captors.
A graduate from Victoria University, with a bachelor of commerce and administration degree, Thompson was also a former Territorial soldier trained in survival techniques. He was a loner known to have spent long periods on his own in the bush, and had stocked up on dried foods at a supermarket the previous week.
Even his relatives joined police in the search, which ended 65 days later, just after 5pm on June 24, when he was discovered in a gully near Havelock North, roasting over a fire a sheep he had just killed.
The Armed Offenders Squad swooped. An officer ran toward Thompson yelling "police, get down, get down, get down".
Thompson, carrying a loaded, military-style rifle, looked directly at the officer and replied "shoot me, shoot me, shoot me, ****ing shoot me". He was holding the M1 carbine with one hand in a polythene bag, and the other hand on the barrel. As he lifted the barrel and pivoted, the officer confronting him fired a single shot from his Glock pistol. It went through Thompson's chest and heart and killed him instantly.
The next day, the name of Terence Kohema Thompson, born David Charles Rangiharuru Ropiha, was called in the Hastings District Court, and a warrant for his arrest was withdrawn.
Inevitably, there were complaints by Thompson's family. They suggested police had shot him in revenge, and said they should have been called to the scene of confrontation to negotiate his surrender. But police remained convinced by a variety of evidence, including Thompson's behaviour, medical and criminal histories and writings found in his home, that he deliberately provoked a confrontation and intended to make a statement to the world by dying at their hands.
Two subsequent inquiries by the Police Complaints Authority and Hastings Coroner Peter Dennehy found police were entirely justified in their actions.