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A man who held a woman hostage at gunpoint during a 15-hour standoff with police says he knew he could have died that day, but at the time it didn’t faze him. “I felt, on that day, things weren’t going to end well for me,” Phillip Clinton Mant told the New Zealand Parole Board from a room at Rolleston Prison on Wednesday morning. He told the woman, who he also threatened to blow up with a homemade bomb, they would “both be leaving the house in coffins”. Her 80-year-old father had been “herded into the house and forced on the floor” at gunpoint and lay terrified at the thought he might see his daughter die in front of him. Mant was sentenced last July to five years and two months in prison for what was described as “horrifying violence” in August 2024. Phillip Clinton Mant during sentencing in the Nelson District Court in July 2025 on charges related to a hostage situation in Nelson South the year before. Photo by Stuff / pool / Nelson Mail The victim said at sentencing she remained terrified for her safety upon his release from prison. “It has hijacked my mind, what he will do on release,” the woman said as she shook uncontrollably while reading from her victim impact statement. Yesterday, Mant was denied parole at his first hearing. He was also advised to consider alternative regions to the area he said was an option for where he might live upon his eventual release. Panel convener for the board hearing, Judge Edwin Paul said the level of offending meant broad exclusion zones were likely to be put in place. He prepared Mant partway through the hearing for the fact it was unlikely he would be released at this stage of his sentence. “I’ll be straight with you now,” the judge said, having pushed Mant for answers on a series of questions linked to what he had done. Family Court ‘fixation’ Mant was said to have been fixated on an earlier Family Court process, and rather than take the offers of support available to him, he told the Parole Board he chose his own course of action. “I had help around me, but chose to ignore it,” Mant said of his behaviour that was also driven by a cocktail of drugs, alcohol and depression. In the months before the events of August 12, 2024, Mant hand-wrote hundreds of pages of notes venting his anger over a Family Court matter. Police at the scene of the hostage situation in Nelson in August 2024, when Phillip Mant held a woman at gunpoint during a 15-hour police standoff. Photo / Tim Cuff He told the board his decision to represent himself in court was a mistake and that he had been a “fish out of water”. “They threw things at me and I took the bait. I reacted. I was out of my league,” he told panel member Waimarama Taumaunu. Mant pleaded guilty in the Nelson District Court in February last year to two charges of kidnapping, using an explosive to commit an offence, unlawfully possessing a firearm, committing a crime with a firearm, threatening to kill and threatening grievous bodily harm, two charges of breaching a protection order, and committing a threatening act towards a dwelling and the people in it. His actions prompted the lockdown of nearby schools, a hospital and a campground, and inconvenienced thousands of residents after many streets were closed. Drove to house with loaded rifle and explosives Mant had been “given” a .22 rifle by a friend he claimed did not know what he was planning. He refused to tell Taumaunu who that person was. “No comment,” Mant said firmly when asked. He also had ammunition and had made what police said was a “crude” improvised explosive device. Phillip Mant was “given” a .22 rifle by a friend he claimed did not know what he was planning. Photo / NZ police He also had eight envelopes containing handwritten notes that were his “demands” to the police. Mant then drove to the street where the vi...
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