Held hostage by hitcher

Daniel Phillips. Photo / Stephen Barker

A student held hostage by a knife-wielding hitch-hiker thought he was going to be "filleted" at a remote farmhouse.

Daniel Phillips, 25, was attacked as he drove from Hamilton to Auckland to spend a few days with his family.

The fourth-year law student picked up the hitch-hiker in Huntly on January 28 and bought him a soft drink when they stopped in Mercer.

"Then, before we got to Pokeno, he pulled out a knife and stuck it into my throat and told me to start driving slowly."

Phillips said his assailant held a knife at his throat or kidney when they were near other cars, before he ordered him to leave State Highway 1 at the intersection with SH2.

"Then we went up an abandoned road to an abandoned farmhouse. At this point I was thinking he was probably going to fillet me. At the end, where he got me to pull off at the end of the road, pretty much I thought it was all over."

Phillips said the hitch-hiker told him to empty his pockets and was annoyed he didn't have any money. He was ordered from his white Mitsubishi station wagon before his attacker drove off.

Phillips ran to alert police from a farmhouse 1km away, and the hitch-hiker was arrested in Kingseat after a 15-minute chase.

"I was in the cop car listening to the radio," he said. "They had eight or nine cars after him but he just kept on driving. Then he crashed into something that popped out a couple of wheels."

A 61-year-old has appeared in court charged with eight offences, including kidnapping, threatening to kill, possession of an offensive weapon and dangerous driving, and will reappear late this month.

Phillips said the man had a few "prison tats" on his wrist but looked relatively harmless.

"He seemed a decent enough bloke. He had a pack on and was carrying a tent. He seemed relatively clean and tidy for someone who had been hitching or camping a while."

Phillips said he offered a ride because he had hitched "a fair bit" and wanted to help others.

They chatted about his passenger's time camping in Raglan and Phillips' legal studies.

"Then he asked me how I would react to bad fortune and horrible situations," said Phillips.

"I said I always try to get the best out of things. At that point he said 'oh yeah, oh yeah' then he pulled out the knife and said 'don't f****** move'."

After pulling out the 13-14cm vegetable knife, the hitch-hiker started asking for money, forcing Phillips to laugh because "I didn't have a cent".

He was most worried about abandoning his laptop and law books when he fled and was relieved police recovered them.

Phillips is angry about spending hundreds of dollars repairing his car but philosophical about the experience.

"I told my aunty later that what was bothering me was that this was how I was going to die, how embarrassing that I was going to get filleted with a bloody piece-of-crap kitchen knife."

But he won't be picking up hitchers anymore: "I always thought when I was younger 'it's good to help someone out', but after this, hell no."

In the High Court at Wellington on Friday Ranginui Magnum Taueki, 19, was sentenced to three years' jail after robbing a motorist who had stopped to give him a lift.