THAT blue Christmas light was still flashing at 1.59am the next day as police Assistant Commissioner Mark Jenkins stood at the door of the Tactical Operations Unit.
In the cafe, the hostages were huddled in the corner between the Martin Place windows and the glass doors that opened into the foyer where highway patrol officer Paul Withers had silently communicated with Marcia Mikhael and April Bae almost 17 hours earlier.
Monis was using them as human shields.
COPS’ FURY AT LINDT SIEGE INQUEST ‘WITCH HUNT’
He sat on a long bench seat between Selina Win Pe and Julie Taylor. Mikhael and Katrina Dawson were in the back corner. Puspendu Ghosh and Viswakanth Ankireddy were sitting near the foyer doors, with Jarrod Morton-Hoffman and Fiona Ma a bit closer to the Phillip St end.
Joel Herat was at a nearby table with Harriette Denny.
Monis had let some of them ring their families. Johnson rang his parents sobbing.
Denny texted her family: “Losing hope, very scared. Love you all.”
They all had no idea that one of them had to die before police would swoop.
The harsh truth was the police commanders had not approved the Direct Action plan even though it had been drawn up, backed and preferred by the tactical commander.
Yet even if approval was given, the plan would still need extra authorisation and then time to stage. The police never got past the first step.
It left them with only two options — Monis surrendering or storming the cafe under the Emergency Action plan. This plan would occur only after a hostage was killed.
The police forward commander had decided the risk that Monis was carrying a bomb meant he was never going to order the officers into the cafe “unless someone was killed”.
Outside in Phillip St was the Alpha team led by Officer A, a 183cm senior constable whose magazine had jammed on his way to the cafe the previous morning.
In doors off the Martin Place foyer were the Delta and Charlie teams. The officers were still in the 25kg of body armour and equipment they had been wearing all day.
Adrenaline was the only thing keeping them going.
As they backed themselves into a corner tactically, police also totally stuffed up what would be their last attempt to negotiate.
It wasn’t until 1.59am that Jenkins finally made the order to turn off the Christmas lights that were agitating Monis.
Somehow Jenkins never knew the request had first been made nearly six hours earlier at 8.38pm when Mikhael spoke to the police negotiator — known only as “Peter”.
While other Monis demands, like moving police and vehicles back, had been acted on almost immediately, it was recognised later the Christmas lights could have been a real chance to gain a concession like the release of hostages.
A listening device planted earlier in the cafe recorded Monis on edge over the lights.
“I have to kill one person because time has gone. I have to kill one person,” he said as he prodded Win Pe in the back with his gun.
Three times between 12.30am and 12.37am she tried to call negotiators but each time the call rang out.
At 12.48am she called triple-0. Two minutes later she called triple-0 again and told the operator Monis wanted the lights turned off.
“He’s losing his patience,” she said.
At 12.53am the negotiators called her back. Win Pe told Monis the message was that it could take some time to turn off the lights.
The Ausgrid crew had packed up and gone home after they were told to stand down. No one could later recall where that order came from.
At 1.12am, Win Pe called negotiators back: “I have 15 minutes before I am killed.”
At 1.43am Johnson sent what was to be his final text to family: “He’s increasingly agitated.
“Walks around when he hears noises outside with a hostage in front of him. Wants to release one person in good faith. Tell police.”
The terrified hostages had no idea what was going on outside.
They did not know the psychiatrist advising the police had concluded that Win Pe and Mikhael, both highly intelligent women, were being “overly dramatic”.
There was another noise which only Monis in his paranoia seemed to hear.
With Win Pe and Ma as his human shields, he walked towards the Phillip St side of the cafe to the kitchen. It was the first time he had left the main cafe area.
Morton-Hoffman, who had been told to stand with his hands in the air, gesticulated towards the Martin Place foyer doors.
This was their chance to run. The others signalled to each other with their eyes.
Morton-Hoffman knew the doors were unlocked. He made a run for it, followed by Denny, Ghosh, Ankireddy, Herat and Taylor, who thought her friend Katrina Dawson was following.
It was 2.03am.
Someone knocked a glass over during the escape and Monis rushed back and fired his first shot. It went into the window above the foyer doors.
In a move later criticised by international counter-terrorism experts, the forward commander told everyone to stay back.
“We’re not an EA. It’s not the Emergency Action (plan). NO EA. It’s not the EA,” he said over the phone to Jenkins.
There were mixed reports of whether the shot was aimed at the hostages.
Jenkins later recalled being told it had been deliberately fired high, but there was no evidence about who told him that.
The Alpha team automatically “stood to” in Phillip St, just outside the view of the windows.
Officer A had been struggling with his radio all day and at that moment the batteries went dead.
He had to share a colleague’s radio.
Win Pe and Ma fell to the ground and crawled behind the chocolatier’s station to hide. Mikhael and Dawson hid in the corner of the cafe between the foyer doors and Martin Place.
Louisa Hope, who was not prepared to leave her mother behind, was pulled from the floor by her bra straps by Monis and put in front of him along with her mother. They were told to close their eyes.
Monis barked at Johnson to “come over here right now”. He then ordered him “down, down, down on your knees.”
At 2.06am, the snipers in the Westpac building could see Johnson on his knees with his hands on his head.
“It appears a hostage is on his knees,” one of the snipers reported over the radio. But his words were lost. Possibly because of all the radio traffic.
If they had known, the tactical commander and his deputy would have recommended police storm the cafe then and there. While the Sierra team could see Johnson, Monis was behind a pillar and they could only just make out the stock of his shotgun.
At 2.09am, another shot was heard from inside the cafe. Monis had fired in the air. Ma ran towards the Phillip St exit. She punched the green exit button and escaped.
Jenkins was never told Johnson was on his knees. He was also never told about the second shot. Meanwhile, Officer A and the Alpha team were concerned Monis had started executing hostages.
But still no one gave them the code to storm the cafe.
Just then Win Pe heard Johnson gasp “Oh my God”.
Monis reached across his body and pulled out a bullet from the right pocket of his cargo pants. He loaded it into the left chamber of the shotgun and started to “psych” himself up.
The madman started to breathe heavily. Then he shot Johnson dead. The young cafe manager fell straight to the floor.
The force of the shot startled Monis and threw him backwards into Hope.
At 2.13.22am, Sierra 3-1 radioed: “Sierra … white window 2 … hostage down.”
It was repeated by a sniper in the Channel 7 building. This was the trigger for the emergency action plan. Jenkins and the tactical commander authorised it.
“Echo Alpha this is Tango Charlie. Commit the EA,” the tactical commander radioed, followed by the code. But there was no acknowledgment. No one moved. The broadcast had failed.
His deputy took over and shortened the order to: “All teams commit the EA” and repeated the code word three times. The ballistic shield man with Alpha team, known as Alpha 2, had to be told by Officer A that the EA had been called.
His radio hadn’t worked all day and there had been no replacements. Despite his 25kg uniform and 17.5kg shield, he sprinted along Phillip St “like Usain bolt” followed by the team.
They were all aware of Monis had claimed he had a bomb — but they rushed toward the final showdown without a concern that it could mean certain death.
Alpha 2 was first in as another officer breached the glass doors, sheltering behind the shield. Monis was right where they had been told he would be, towards the right hand corner of the cafe.
The officers threw stun grenades as Monis fired two shots. Officer A, who had never fired his gun at anyone before, locked eyes with Monis.
He fired off 17 rounds, his red laser dot moving up from Monis’ chest to his head. Another team member, Officer B, fired off five rounds. Monis fell to the floor. His head was half blown off.
Charlie and Delta teams entered the cafe from the Martin Place foyer, but Monis was already dead.
“We need some f***ing medics in here,” Alpha 2 shouted. Johnson was carried out of the main doors onto the footpath, where paramedics performed CPR.
He was pronounced dead on arrival at hospital.
Hope, her daughter Louisa, Win Pe and Mikhael were all helped or carried out. Officer A went back into the cafe to look for more hostages and saw Dawson lying on the floor.
She had been hit by seven fragments of police bullets. She was declared dead at 3.12am.
As the hostages escaped or were rescued from the cafe, the family members were still waiting in the old Supreme Court building on King St.
Dawson and Johnson families had to deduce their loved ones had been killed by a process of elimination. They were the only families remaining who weren’t reunited with their loved ones.
Their anguish would no doubt play on the mind of NSW Coroner Michael Barnes, who took on the onerous task of an inquest into the tragedy.
On Wednesday, he releases his findings. They will be controversial to some — but at their heart will be trying to ensure the costly mistakes of the Lindt Cafe siege don’t happen again.
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