University students doing cafe shifts to earn extra cash, Westpac executives, New South Wales top cops and barristers will all be brought together in the next two weeks as the state coroner works to unravel the 16-hour Sydney siege in December last year.
Video and audio recordings from inside the cafe will be aired, each hostage will give evidence and police will be asked to explain their decisions at the inquest into the deaths of Tori Johnson and Katrina Dawson on 16 December.
Some hostages have already spoken about what they thought were their last moments, an erratic gunman who would scream at them one moment and smile toothily the next demanding they call him “brother” and applaud when certain things were said on talkback radio.
Police have gone on the record defending their decisions but with more than 100 witnesses called to the inquest, the public will finally have a glimpse at the intricate workings of events that led to, happened during and ended the siege.
Some of those set to talk are:
Fiona Ma, 19, Lindt Cafe staff
Ma started working at the cafe only the week before the siege and was praised by the hostages for her calmness and bravery. When the first hostages fled the cafe she was urged by one to run with them but she refused.
“I can’t leave people behind,” she told Channel Nine. “I wouldn’t be able to live with the guilt if something happened to everyone else. I made the choice to stay behind until like the very end.”
Ma was trusted by Monis, something she is unable to explain, and she was asked to escort hostages to the bathroom at different times. She had her iPhone in her apron pocket and let each of the hostages use it to call or text their loved ones secretly.
Ma had initially served Monis when he came into the cafe – chocolate cheesecake and English Breakfast tea – and said was a “nice” customer.
John O’Brien, 82, customer
O’Brien was the first hostage to escape the cafe just after 3.30pm on 15 December. At first told by Monis to put his hands up at the window, O’Brien said he was too tired and sat down. He had noticed a green button at one of the doors and, gesturing to it, asked a cafe worker, Paolo Vassallo, if the button would open the door. Vassallo said he did not know as he had been there only a week.
“He [Monis] said, ‘I will kill you all one by one,’ ” O’Brien told Channel Seven.
O’Brien had been in the city for a doctor’s appointment and stopping by the Lindt cafe was a bit of a ritual. He has acknowledged there is some tension between the hostages over who fled and when.
“I have that feeling that they think, ‘Well, why should you be the first one out?’ Well, why shouldn’t I?” he told the Daily Telegraph.
“It sort of upset me a little bit and I thought, ‘What am I supposed to do? I’m not Superman. Am I supposed to go down there and grab his gun and take it off him? I’m 82; I haven’t got the strength to do that.’ ”
Jarrod Morton-Hoffman, 19, Lindt Cafe shift worker
Morton-Hoffman was told by his manager, Johnson, to lock the doors at the beginning of the siege while Johnson sat with Monis. Johnson told the teenager everything was going to be OK and the staff were not in danger, but Morton-Hoffman still passed a Stanley knife to his co-worker when he passed them out the back.
“Generally when someone says everything is OK and tell the staff they’re not in danger, everything is not OK,” he told Channel Nine’s 60 Minutes.
Morton-Hoffman volunteered to do the phone calls to the media and police negotiators but was “sacked” for being too calm.
“I was trying to use a sort of code. I was speaking [to a police negotiator] and he asked, ‘How many gunman are there?’ I said, ‘He is treating us really well,’ ” he said.
“I got sacked. He said, ‘Jarrod, you’re too calm. We need someone to cry to the media.’ ”
When the first three hostages escaped Monis lost his temper.
“He has got all of us, a human shield around him, and he is then talking really, really fast and he is saying, ‘The police, the police, the police have helped them. I have to kill you now,’ ” Morton-Hoffman said.
“I just started saying over and over, ‘The police didn’t help them, the police didn’t help them.’ He started to calm down for a second and he goes, like, ‘Oh Jarrod, you – if you didn’t speak faster, I would have killed someone. I was going to shoot you, but thank you, Jarrod.’ ”
The hostages made a deal with Monis that if any more escaped then he would shoot some of the remaining group. Hours later two slipped out an emergency exit.
Monis did not notice but then had Morton-Hoffman read the news from his phone.
“It was ‘Five people have escaped, five people have escaped’ so I changed it and just started making things up,” he said.
At one point Morton-Hoffman went to the bathroom to throw up.
“Then I thought, right, back to work,” he said.
Morton-Hoffman eventually helped the last group escape the cafe, running out before Monis shot Johnson.
“I thought that Tori was right behind me. I saw [fellow worker] Joel but I thought I saw Tori. I thought that it was Tori as well. And I just thought we were all going to be OK. And I thought, I thought wrong. I got most out. But just not enough.”
Stefan Balafoutis, Lindt Cafe customer
Balafoutis, a barrister who was among the first three escapees, has not spoken publicly. Other hostages say that Monis was very agitated by Balafoutis and called him “white shirt man” during the siege and repeatedly yelled at him to stop moving and talking.
Paolo Vassallo, 36, Lindt Cafe staff
Vassallo was in the first group to flee after O’Brien asked him if a green button would open the locked automatic doors. He said Monis did not like Johnson and “had it in for him from the beginning”.
“I couldn’t take it any longer in there. I just couldn’t. I’ve got kids at home. I was just thinking about them,” Vassallo said on his escape.
“Me running was a chance I could make it. There was just as much chance I could have got shot.”
Vassallo has since suffered from survivor guilt and told Channel Seven he sometimes wished he had stayed inside the cafe.
“It still kills me,” he said. “Yes, as bad as it sounds and as ungrateful as it sounds, I almost wish I got killed in there,” he said.
Marcia Mikhael, 43, Lindt Cafe customer
Mikhael was one of the last hostages inside the cafe and was lying next to Dawson when she was fatally wounded after police stormed the cafe.
“As soon as the second shot took place, and she [Dawson] looked at me, and then she puts her hands on her face and she puts her face down, like to protect her face, and I kind of go into a foetal position, you know, and my legs get hit. Both legs were in agony,” Mikhael told Channel Seven’s Sunday Night program.
“There were just so many shots, and I could smell the gunpowder … I could feel the heat of things, like, near me, hitting me, whether it was the stunt grenades or bullets or whatever it was I could feel them, they were so close to me, and that strong smell of gunpowder, and it was so bright.”
Mikhael was conscious when she was carried out of the cafe by police who stepped over the body of Monis.
“It wasn’t a pretty sight. Half his brain was, like, hanging out,” she said. “It was terrible. So they take me outside. And that’s how it ended for me. I was safe. Katrina was right next to me and she didn’t make it, but I did.”
Mikhael had managed to send a furtive text at the beginning of the siege to her partner saying “Lindt hostage” and messaged him again at 7pm saying she did not think she would make it out alive. Monis allowed her a tearful phone call with her children at one point.
“I told them that I loved them very much and I needed them to remember that. My eldest son kept telling me, ‘Mum, stop it, everything’s going to be OK’, and I kept telling him, ‘I know, I know, but just remember that I love you.’ Then I had to hang up.”
Mikhael was one of the hostages who spoke to police and requested an Isis flag and a phone conversation with the prime minister, Tony Abbott.
“I actually lost it when someone told me the prime minister was a very busy man and he can’t come to the phone,” she said. “I yelled at him and I just couldn’t believe it. I think I actually said that I don’t care what he is doing right now, whether he’s walking his dog or he’s you know playing golf with his mates, I’m sure there’s nothing more important happening in Australia right now than this, and the lives of the people in this cafe. And then I hung up.”
Mikhael said she felt like the hostages had been left alone and nobody was coming for them.
She has had nightmares and flashbacks since the siege and struggles to cope in public spaces. She was harassed on social media after she asked why the army was not called in and it was reported she was seeking a six-figure sum for an interview. Mikhael went to Brazil for an extended holiday earlier this year and has told Fairfax Media she has had suicidal thoughts since the siege.
Elly Chen, 22 and Jieun Bae, 20, Lindt Cafe staff
Chen and Bae escaped together after hiding in a corner of the cafe and quietly sliding the deadlock of a side door and running out unnoticed. Bae slid the deadlock millimetre by millimetre over half an hour whenever Monis’s back was turned.
“We knew how angry he became when they got away, so we wanted to crawl out unnoticed,” Bae told New Idea.
Chen had begun to hyperventilate.
“We actually met for the first time under a table, and I was hysterical. We hadn’t met before then, because I’d only worked at Lindt for three days,” she said in the same magazine interview.
Mikhael saw what the girls were doing and moved so she was blocking Monis’s view of them as much as she could, which Bae said was “really brave”.
“I was shocked that she even moved closer to him,” she told Channel Seven.
Chen said she was told by police she was brave after she ran from the siege.
“I just ran away from this scary situation. I didn’t think of it as bravery,” she said.
Joel Herat, 21, Lindt Cafe staff
Herat was handed a Stanley knife by Morton-Hoffman at the beginning of the siege but the two were unable to coordinate a plan. The hostages were ordered to take turns holding the shahada flag up to the windows, and at one point Herat looked below:
“There was a time when I was standing at the window and he was sitting below me on the lounge and I thought, ‘What do I do? Do I stab him? What if I miss? What are the consequences of that? Who will he shoot?’ ” he told Channel Nine.
Herat was in the last group of hostages to flee and has since returned to work at the cafe. Months after the siege he was still feeling guilt about the death of his manager and friend, Johnson.
“Thinking about, you know, that could I have got him out? Could I have done something? He was a dear friend. Yeah. I left him to die,” he said.
Harriette Denny, 30, Lindt Cafe staff
Denny was 14 weeks’ pregnant and in the last group of hostages to run out of the cafe. She was convinced she was going to die and at one point braced herself to be shot as he lined the hostages up at the windows.
“I heard a velcro opening. I literally thought he was going to shoot us so everyone could see through the window,” she told Channel Nine.
“He was very strange. He would have a big smile on his face when he would threaten us. I don’t know why he kept smiling, but I will remember those teeth.”
At one point Denny gestured to a colleague to have a sandwich from the table behind her and Monis pointed the gun at her face saying, “Be careful what you do or say – I might misunderstand it.”
Denny managed to secretly call her partner and tell him she loved him, believing that she would die in the cafe.
“I didn’t think I was coming out. Knowing that you’re about to die is kind of hard; the desperation you feel, the fear. And without even thinking I just ran.”
Robin Hope, 72, and daughter Louisa Hope, 52, customers
Louisa, who has multiple sclerosis and uses a walking stick, was used as a human shield during the siege. The mother and daughter knew they would not be able to escape because of their limited mobility and resigned themselves to waiting for the police to come. When the last group of hostages ran out Robin said she prepared to die.
“I looked up and opened my eyes and they were all gone. [I thought], ‘Well, this is it,’ but at the same time, ‘I’m ready,’ ” she told Channel Nine.
At one point Robin confronted Monis, telling him she did not like his attitude.
“Well, I just thought no one else had and I thought, ‘Well, I will have a go.’ And I just wanted to let him know that I wasn’t impressed with what he was choosing to do with all of our lives,” she said.
“[I said], ‘I just don’t like your attitude. It’s not an attitude of how we run. We don’t need this. We come in here for refreshments.’ ”
Monis told Louisa to pull her mother in line.
“He said to me, ‘Louisa, keep your mother quiet,’ and so I just turned my head and directly said to her, ‘Mum. You’re an old lady. Be quiet.’ And then she had another go. She stands up and said, ‘I want to go to the bathroom and my daughter needs her medication,’ and then everything changes.”
Monis became very interested in Louisa’s MS and asked lots of questions, assuring her she would be able to take her medication. Louisa was the first hostage to be assigned as a “secretary” to talk to police negotiators and the media but she became too flustered and Morton-Hoffman volunteered.
Louisa was in the cafe when Monis shot Johnson in the head, at almost point blank range, triggering the police storming the building.
“Be assured … that Tori did not see [he was about to be shot]. He did not see. And then it was instant, darling. It was instant. It was instant. And I know he was special to all of you, you know. You loved him. And we loved him,” she said speaking directly to Denny on Channel Nine.
Julie Taylor, 35, customer
Taylor, a barrister who was pregnant and at the cafe with Dawson, has not spoken publicly but released a statement in the days after the siege thanking the other hostages for their “support and consideration” during the siege.
She said words could not describe the events and feelings she had towards the survivors and victims of the siege.
“Katrina Dawson was the most wonderful person I have ever met. She was my closest friend, a role model and confidant. Her bravery and strength was, and continues to be, a comfort and inspiration for me,” she said.
“I would like to pay tribute to Tori Johnson. Although our acquaintance was forged under the worst imaginable circumstances, I feel privileged to have known you and I will always remember you as a kind, considerate, level-headed and courageous person.”
Puspendu Ghosh, customer
Ghosh was in the last group of hostages to flee and said though the thought crossed his mind to try to take on Monis it was too risky.
“The threat of carrying bombs sort of stopped all of us from doing anything,” he told Channel Seven.
Ghosh did not call his family because he did not know what he would say to his parents, or if they even knew he was inside the cafe.
When Monis took two other hostages into a storeroom, Ghosh was one of the group that ran after he saw Morton-Hoffman, who was standing near an exit, signal him.
“I thought like, alright, they might be storming in. I said like, alright, that’s a hope. I’m a bit excited now by what’s happening here,” Ghosh said.
“And he’s [Morton-Hoffman] pointing towards the inside where the gunman is, and then he’s asking like should I – should we run? And then he’s looking at us. That’s when I got ready. I took a stance ... to make a run for things. I nudged Viswa as well because he was sitting next to me.”
Ghosh said he thought Mikhael was with them and in the debriefing room saw his friend and colleague Viswakanth Ankireddy.
“At the debriefing room I saw Viswa and I’ve never hugged someone so much and then I looked around the room and I didn’t see Marcia,” he said.
Selina Win Pe, 43, customer
Monis repeatedly threatened to shoot Win Pe, at one point telling her she had 15 minutes to get police to turn off the public lighting in Martin Place. At the beginning Win Pe thought Monis was going to shoot them in the back and after the first three hostages escaped he put her against a door preparing to shoot.
“He said, ‘Right, eye for an eye. Who – yep, you, three gone, I have to shoot three of you.’ I thought, ‘Oh Christ.’ And these – they are standing there and he literally was poised,” she told Channel Nine.
“I said, ‘Please don’t shoot me, please don’t shoot me. I only have my mum. Please don’t shoot me. He looked me straight in the eyes and said, ‘You have 15 minutes.’ ”
Win Pe was one of the last hostages and was in the storage room with Fiona Ma when Johnson was shot.
Viswakanth Ankireddy, customer
Ankireddy was also in the last group to run after Ghosh had signalled to him. He has talked about the moments they decided to run, with one person knocking over a glass on a table as they ran out.
“I felt that rush of air just passing so fast next to my head. I ran and then I fumbled over on the foyer, which is between the Lindt cafe and another building, and then we just ran away there,” he told Channel Seven.
POLICE EXPECTED TO APPEAR:
NSW deputy police commissioner Catherine Burn
Burn ran the counter-terrorism operation to detain Man Haron Monis on the day of the siege. Tensions in the police over the decision not to storm the cafe before Johnson was shot have been reported, but Burn has been backed by the premier, Mike Baird.
“I worked alongside deputy commissioner Catherine Burn throughout the entire siege. I have nothing but admiration, respect and gratitude for the incredible work she did,” he told Fairfax Media earlier this year.
Assistant commissioner Mark Murdoch
Murdoch led the counter-terrorism unit taskforce Pioneer, which reported to Burn.
Assistant commissioner Mark Jenkins
Jenkins was in charge of the operation at the time Johnson was shot and was the one who gave the order to storm the cafe.
“Going in the way they did is the last resort and only would happen when certain triggers are activated. Gunshots is obviously one, hostages running from the building is another,’’ he has previously said.
Phillip Boulton SC, representing Katrina Dawson
Boulton is a regular at inquests and commissions and one of the most respected criminal law practitioners in Sydney.
Solicitor Peter Hodges, representing Katrina Dawson
A commercial litigation and dispute resolution expert, Hodges has a long list of corporate clients but also acts for individuals.
Bill de Mars, provided by Legal Aid NSW, representing Tori Johnson
Known for representing families of the victims of crime in various court cases, de Mars is a senior member of Legal Aid.
Ian Freckelton QC, representing the police
A high-profile barrister who took the silk in 2007, in 2012 Freckelton represented the Medical Board of Australia in tribunal hearings of the so-called Dr Death, Jayant Patel, who Freckelton argued should not be registered again as a doctor. This year he was appointed a special commissioner at the Victorian Law Reform Commission to lead its reference on the medicinal uses of cannabis.
“Officer A” and “Officer B” from the entry team also have legal representation but the inquest has not named them.
