Police have charged Rollie James Heke with three counts of attempted murder after he was arrested early on Friday morning.
Police say they apprehended Heke in the Kaingaroa Forest township after two weeks on the run.
He was arrested without incident, and will appear in the Rotorua District Court on Friday facing charges relating to outstanding warrants on methamphetamine-related offending.
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The 37-year-old also faces charges of unlawful possession of a firearm and failing to stop.
Police have also arrested and charged five more people in relation to the operation to locate Heke.
Heke's associate, 43-year-old Irene Scanlon, was taken into custody on her warrant to arrest when Police executed a search warrant in Te Awamutu on Friday morning.
She will appear on her outstanding warrant in Hamilton District Court.
In addition to this, a 32-year-old man and three women aged 62, 43 and 29, have all been charged with being an accessory after the fact and were set to appear in Rotorua District Court on Friday.
Police Superintendent Bruce Bird told the AM Show, "We got some information yesterday and we started following that up, it led us to an address in Kaingaroa Forest."
"The arrest this morning was as a result of high quality investigation work from Police staff across the country," he said.
Police say Heke came out with his hands up.
"I think he might have know the noose was starting to tighten and he was pretty resigned to what was happening."
Kaingaroa local and Four Square owner Magan Keshav says the heavy police presence during the night "came as a shock" as it's a small community of just a few hundred people.
Former police negotiator Lance Burdett told the AM Show it's difficult to hide in a small country like New Zealand and members of the public are crucial to an investigation like this.
"Particularly with P we know people do become unpredictable when they are trying to hide away, they are like a caged animal, and so the associates also have to be careful as well."
His arrest comes almost two weeks after a shootout between a gunman armed with a semi-automatic rifle and police in the Waikato town of Morrinsville. No officers were hurt.
Newshub.
