Lindt siege inquest: Tests back chief sniper’s hunch that thick bank window would deflect bullet

THE head sniper at the Lindt Cafe siege criticised his police bosses at a debrief after it ended for throwing the training manual out of the window.

• LINDT INQUEST: POLICE CHIEFS WERE ‘HANDS OFF’
• RADIO FAILURE DELAYED FINAL ACTION IN SIEGE
• LINDT INQUEST: ‘IT’S AMAZING WE’RE NOT ALL DEAD’
• MAN MONIS’ HEAD ‘BURST LIKE BALLOON’

THE head sniper at the Lindt Cafe siege criticised his police bosses at a debrief after it ended for throwing the training manual out of the window.

The Tactical Operations Unit sergeant had trained for years to co-ordinate the teams of snipers in this kind of high-risk situation from the forward command post, gathering intelligence and feeding it to the marksmen.

But he told the inquest into the siege yesterday that when he reported to the forward command post on December 15, 2014, the first day of the siege, he was sent straight out to a sniper position.

A .308 Winchester calibre sniper bullet going through 6mm replica Lindt Cafe glass.

He had to co-ordinate the three sniping teams around Martin Place from his post on the first floor in the Westpac building while rarely taking his eye off the sight of his own rifle in case he missed anything happening in the cafe.

“The way we trained for incidents like this is for the sniper co-ordinator to be in the command post. I asked to perform that role on this occasion, but I didn’t,” the sniper, codenamed Sierra 3-1, said.

“I co-ordinated from the field best as I could.”

He said it was one of a number of points raised at the TOU debrief after the siege of how police “could have done better.”

“My point to the debrief was ... we need to play how we train,” the sergeant, who cannot be named, said.

A bullet penetrates 6mm glass during tests. The sniper’s concern was not the Lindt window but the thickened bank window he had to shoot through first.

Trained as a sniper since 2007, he said the reason for the co-ordinator to be in the forward command post was to liaise with the tactical commanders and negotiators and debrief hostages so he could pass intelligence on to the snipers and use it to “plan to resolve the situation”.

When he had terrorist Man Monis in his sights for 10 minutes at around 7.35pm that day, he sought “intelligence reports” to satisfy himself that the hostages were under an immediate threat and he could take the shot.

Police storm the scene at 2.20am the morning after the siege began.

There was no sign they were under imminent danger so legally he could not shoot Monis, he said.

“If the legal justification had been there was a shot that you would have attempted?” he was asked by Gabrielle Bashir SC, counsel for the family of slain cafe manager Tori Johnson.

“Yes,” the sniper said.

They did not see Monis again until 2am the next day just before six hostages escaped and Monis shot Mr Johnson dead, which triggered police storming the cafe.

Floral tributes surrounded the siege scene in the days following the incident.

Katrina Dawson.

Tori Johnson (right) with partner Thomas Zinn.

The sniper said that even when he saw Mr Johnson through a cafe window on his knees, he did not accept his life was in “imminent danger”.

At the time Monis was behind a wall between windows and not in view.

“If I saw in a window in a sniper position where a hostage was about to die I would do what I could to stop it if I had a shot option,” he said

When police stormed the cafe at 2.13am to kill Monis, barrister Katrina Dawson died after being hit by fragments of police bullets.

The inquest in Sydney continues on Monday.