The mother of Kaoss Price is taking her fight for accountability to the High Court, challenging the Police decision not to prosecute the officer who fatally shot her 22-year-old son in Taranaki.
The case is now before the High Court in Wellington, where the Price whānau is seeking judicial review of the handling of the fatal shooting and the decision that followed. The family wants the court to scrutinise whether the process was lawful, transparent and sufficiently independent.
Price, a young Māori father, was killed on State Highway 3 between New Plymouth and Waitara on 16 April 2022.
The incident began after Police stopped an associate travelling in convoy with Price. He subsequently drove away, returned and rammed a Police dog van before leaving his vehicle and attempting to take control of another vehicle. Price was unarmed.
An officer fired six shots at Price across three separate stages of the incident. He was also tasered and bitten by a Police dog before dying at the scene.
Police later concluded the officer’s actions were lawful and justified, and no criminal charges were laid.
But the Independent Police Conduct Authority reached a significantly different conclusion when it released its investigation in November 2024.
While the IPCA considered the officer justified in using a firearm during the first two stages of the incident, it found the fatal shot amounted to excessive force on the balance of probabilities. The Authority concluded, by what it described as a fine margin, that the final shooting was unjustified.
Despite that finding, the IPCA did not recommend criminal charges or an employment process against the officer.
The Authority concluded the available evidence was not sufficiently compelling to establish beyond reasonable doubt that the officer would be unable to rely on self-defence under section 48 of the Crimes Act.
That apparent contradiction — an official finding that the fatal force was excessive and unjustified, but no prosecution following — has remained at the heart of the Price whānau’s campaign for answers.
Price’s mother, Jillian Hana, filed judicial review proceedings challenging the Police investigation and decision-making process. The proceedings allege problems involving independence, transparency and natural justice and seek reconsideration of the decision alongside access to key information surrounding it.
The legal challenge also comes against a wider backdrop of concern within whānau and communities about how fatal Police shootings are investigated when the organisation responsible for the officer is also involved in investigating the circumstances.
The IPCA’s findings established that the final confrontation offered another tactical option. It found the officer could have used a Taser and that firing the fatal shot also created a serious risk to the civilians inside the vehicle Price was attempting to take.
For the Price whānau, the High Court proceedings represent another stage in a battle that has now continued for more than four years.
The court will not simply be revisiting the tragedy of what happened on State Highway 3. At its centre is a much broader question about accountability when lethal force is exercised by the state — and whether the systems responsible for investigating that force command the confidence of the families and communities left behind.
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