For 17 hours, police deliberated how to free the Sydney siege hostages. Photo / Getty Images.
For 17 hours, police deliberated how to free the Sydney siege hostages. Photo / Getty Images.
On the morning of December 15, 2014, Man Monis walked into a Sydney cafe with a gun, and a plan. Eighteen people were held hostage in the Lindt cafe on Martin Place. Only 16 would survive. Several hours into the siege, three people escaped. They were soon to realise how far the police were from devising a plan to free the remaining hostages. Below is an extract from a new book Siege by Deborah Snow, an in-depth look of what happened on that fateful day.
Paolo Vassallo, the food supervisor, is still at the Phillip Street window closest to the fire exit when he hears a sharp noise from the main entrance to his left. John O'Brien is streaking past outside, closely followed by Stefan Balafoutis.
The sight plunges Paolo into full flight-or-fight mode himself. Briefly he thinks about trying to escape the same way before realising Monis will now be fully focused on the main entrance. In a split second, he decides to run the other way, bolting for the kitchen corridor to his right knowing that a few short steps from there will take him up to the fire door and out onto Phillip Street.
Paolo Vassallo escaped the cafe shortly after two other hostages ran out. Photo / Getty Images.
For the police tactical operations officers, waiting poised for action in the vehicle bay next door, it's a shock to see John and Stefan flying towards them. 'Where the f**k did you come from!' the shield-bearer Alpha 2 exclaims, a jolt of adrenaline now running through the entire team. They're still braced, guns raised, when three seconds later the fire exit door swings open and Paolo comes tumbling out, almost slamming the door in the face of one of the police.
'Get behind me! Get f***ing behind me!' Alpha 2 barks at him. Only a few minutes earlier the tactical police team had been denied permission to reconnoitre behind that door. Now it's clear to them for the first time that it opens freely from the inside.
Paolo begs them to go in, to do something: 'Please, what are you guys doing? He's going to shoot someone. You've got to go in, what are you waiting for? If you wait, people are going to die!'
The three escapees have the barest of exchanges with the tactical team members before they're hustled down to the leagues' club, where police investigators and negotiators are waiting to glean their first direct insight into the dynamics inside the cafe.
The three who've made it out are relieved beyond measure. But for Stefan and Paolo, the escape is bittersweet. They are free, but two of Stefan's close friends are still trapped inside, and seven of Paolo's workmates. Better than anyone else, Stefan and Paolo know what those still inside will be going through.
Inside the leagues' club, the police teams are working cheek by jowl, manning phones, monitoring TV footage, (Channel 7 cameraman) Greg Parker's images (which are coming to them via a direct feed) and vision from cameras set up by their own technical branch. They confer around the small tables scattered through the upstairs bar area. Numbers are building up and soon there will be 90 or more people occupying the first and second floors of the old club building.
Running down the middle of the main room is the bar, where for decades some of rugby league's biggest names hatched schemes, drowned sorrows and celebrated club triumphs. That this is now the central hub of a counter-terrorism operation is more than a trifle incongruous. Indeed, the whole scene strikes Paolo as something of a "shambles". People are talking over each other, and he wonders how anyone can get their thoughts straight amid the clamour. He is surprised at how much he has lost track of time. It's not close to midday, as he had thought, but just after 3.40pm.
Paolo is handed over to negotiators and some of the intelligence team, who need to confirm the gunman's identity and learn more about how the hostages are faring. The police show him photos of Monis and Paolo remembers the mole on the gunman's cheek, which shows up in one of the images he is given to look at.
One thing he wants to get off his chest: he doesn't believe Monis' claim that there is a bomb in the backpack. Paolo acknowledges that Monis hasn't taken it off, not once. But it's not settling on the gunman's back in the way Paolo thinks it should do if there was really a bomb in there.
"The way he was moving freely and how the backpack was moving, if there had been something in there I just couldn't see how it would be moving that way," he tells the officers. In his own mind, Paolo had dismissed Monis' claim of having a bomb.
The police take this on board, but say they can't dismiss the possibility of an improvised explosives device on these observations alone. It worries Paolo that he detects no sense of urgency at the forward command post to neutralise the gunman. He tells the police not to wait, that Monis is going to shoot someone and is not intending to walk out alive. By now the on-call consultant psychiatrist to the police has arrived and is listening in to the debriefings. He decides Paolo is "babbling".
The paramedics want to get Paolo to hospital quickly because of his history of heart problems. They tell detectives he can be questioned further once he's had medical clearance. Peering out of the ambulance windows, Paolo thinks how empty the city is. Nothing is moving — just police cars and a few emergency vehicles.
Stefan and John spend longer at the hostage reception centre, telling police everything they can remember. John is briefly examined by a paramedic, but is judged fit enough to undergo a "hot debrief" with one of the negotiators before being taken upstairs to give a longer statement.
Stefan is elated at being free, but guilt-ridden about leaving Katrina and Julie behind. He impresses on the police the numerous times Monis has directly threatened the hostages. The man never puts the shotgun down, he tells the intelligence officers.
How many are now left in the cafe? He can't be sure; he was menaced every time the gunman caught him with his eyes open. He estimates around six staff members, perhaps 15 hostages in all.
He stresses that Monis is fixated on getting the message out to the public that it's an Islamic State attack, and that politicians are lying about his motives. Like Paolo, Stefan is convinced, he tells the police, that Monis has no exit plan.
Police attend a hostage situation at Lindt Cafe in Sydney. Photo / Getty Images
The escape of John, Stefan and Paolo triggered an immediate tumult in the cafe. Some of the hostages dived onto the floor or onto the banquette, while Katrina and Selina took cover under a table.
Monis was incandescent with rage and shock. In just a handful of seconds he had lost three of his human bargaining chips. "The police have helped them. I've got to kill people now," he ranted. "Someone has to die now."
Louisa had been sitting at the table she and her mother had occupied ever since Monis had seized control of the cafe. She'd heard the slight commotion as John O'Brien hit the green button to open the main door but, because she was facing towards Martin Place, she hadn't seen the men's escape and at first she too assumed the police had helped them out.
Suddenly a hand clamped down on her shoulder, dragging her to her feet. After sitting for so long, it was a struggle to keep her balance. Monis had her in his grip, with the shotgun close to her back. He was positioning her to face the door.
Louisa's mind started racing: "This is it. If he doesn't shoot me now, whatever cop is about to come through that door is going to shoot me." She lowered her head, braced for whatever was going to come next. "I'm praying, just praying. There is a scripture in the Christian texts which says pray without ceasing — I know exactly what that means now.
"Then, quick as anything, Jarrod yells out, 'No, they escaped, they escaped!' It's blurry for me now, but I remember Jarrod saying, 'Don't kill, don't kill her.' He was so quick on his feet."
Jarrod recalls being less focused on who Monis had seized and more on the overwhelming sense that they were all now in great danger. "I was in shock," he says. "There was this great commotion and I'm thinking, 'I've got to stop this guy from shooting us, because he has misinterpreted what has happened. He thinks the police have somehow helped them get out.' So I'm not focused on who he is grabbing; I'm just conscious of the fact that we are like sardines in a can with a shotgun to our back. And I know from playing way too many video games that pellets from a shotgun can spray out in all directions and cut down more than one of us."
The others joined in trying to talk Monis down. And within a few minutes the gunman's threats eased off. Monis told them: "Everyone thank Jarrod — if you hadn't spoken faster, I would have killed someone."
With the immediate crisis averted, Jarrod felt relief. But niggling at the back of his brain was also a small sense of resentment. He felt the burden of managing Monis settling more heavily on his own shoulders now that three of the older men had gone.
"After that escape, I felt my role shifted — from trying to figure him out to keeping him under control. When he said, 'Everyone thank Jarrod,' my thought from that point on was 'Well, this is my job now,' not so much consciously but subconsciously. I became more vocal after that. And that burden of responsibility, it was something to keep you on your toes. I was OK with it, but also scared with it. Worried that if I made a mistake it would be my fault that other people died. I didn't want to live with that, but at the same time I felt I had to do it. It didn't really feel like a choice."
Louisa could not understand why the police had not seized the chance to come in. "I'm thinking, what's going on? Where are they? It would have been a great opportunity for them to come in."
Monis spelt out the new deal forcefully, and unambiguously: If anyone else ran someone would die, and their death would lie on the head of the person who'd fled. "You'll go to jail," he told them. "You'll be blamed everywhere by other people for running and you will go to jail."
Jarrod couldn't help a dry inward laugh at this ridiculous legal logic, wondering what the two barristers left in the room were making of it.
A view from the roof of Commercial Travellers Club building in Martin Place of the thousands of floral tributes for deceased hostages Tori Johnson and Katrina Dawson. Photo / Getty Images.
Monis, still fuming, told the hostages they were going to have to put up with becoming more tired, because he had fewer of them to move around. "He was ordering people to stand closer to him," Elly would tell the inquest later. "He said, 'Now I can't be as nice because there aren't as many people to rotate with you. So you're just going to have to stand there and be tired. Maybe I shouldn't be giving you food and water.'"
There was no mistaking the sharpened sense of dread among those hostages who remained. A short time later, Louisa heard Monis grumbling to himself, and it chilled her. "I should have killed that old man; he was a bother right from the start," she could hear him saying. "I should have killed him; I was going to kill him."
Louisa wasn't sure if the others could hear the gunman, but she thought, "Thank goodness that old man got out."
Following an investigation into the siege, NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller appeared to concur with the escaped hostages, telling ABC's 7:30: "We should have gone in as a deliberate action before the first shot, which is a much preferred strategy for any tactical officer."
