Port Arthur massacre: Melbourne’s special operations group reveal the moment they could have killed gunman Martin Bryant

SNIPERS from Melbourne's elite special operations group had Australia’s worst mass murderer in their sights at Port Arthur. This is the moment they could have killed Martin Bryant.

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BRYANT was communicating with negotiators via a cordless telephone, but, when the battery ran out, the critical connection was lost, and the status of the hostages couldn’t be confirmed. Sierra and Haze helped formulate the action plan and tried to re-establish a line of communication, but it wasn’t as simple as handing Bryant a new phone or leaving one on the doorstep.

The SOG (Special Operations Group) considered getting the air force to fly low over the cottage with F/A-18s or F-111s and give off a sonic boom to distract Bryant and bring his attention to the back of the property. When the jets flew over, the plan was to send the assault teams in through the front. Another distraction could have come by way of detonating 44-gallon drums full of fuel.

Well into the night, there was no change to the situation. Bryant was still firing shots out the windows as the police were continually reassessing and altering their approach and tactics.

Sierra changed out of his black SOG uniform into his ghillie suit (a heavily camouflaged outfit designed to hide snipers and infantry among heavy foliage), and assessed the landscape for the best position.

Martin Bryant.

Sons Of God by Heath O'Loughlin

SIERRA: I went out with a Tassie sniper assistant who was on one of his first jobs. We slowly crawled up through the mountains and positioned ourselves right at the front of the house, about 200 metres away, in the middle with a clear view of the stronghold.

The pair was well within range of Bryant’s reckless firing but had no choice but to bunker down and hope for the best.

SIERRA:Bryant was still firing randomly the whole time, so we built a little stone wall in front of us to hide behind. We were still within the forest line but well secreted so that he couldn’t see us. Rounds would zip through the trees and all around us but we had to divorce ourselves from any thought of being hit. We just had to take cover and hope that we didn’t cop one. Although we weren’t entirely safe, we were safe enough.

HAZE: We could hear shots ring out. We could hear high-calibre firearms, centre-fire rifles like a .308; we could hear a .22; we could hear a shotgun. These shots were coming from all different directions. All of the sniper positions were being exposed to random firing, and the assault teams that were trying to form up had shots going over the top of them. We figured out, ‘Hang on a second. This guy is moving around from building to building to building, and he’s setting up firing points in each location.’ So, regardless of where he was on the property, he’d have access to firearms and ammunition.

There’s no doubt he was trying to confuse us about where he was. He was doing very good siege tactics to some extent by creating the impression that there was more than one gunman. It was difficult for us to be able to pinpoint his location.

Suddenly, there was some movement. A shadowy figure emerged from behind a flyscreen door.

The elite special operations group.

SIERRA: Another sniper had seen a glimpse of him but couldn’t take the shot because I don’t think he had his weapon in position. When I caught a look at Bryant, all I could see was a silhouette, but at 200 metres away with a twenty-power scope at night, I couldn’t see if anyone was with him. I couldn’t say with confidence whether he had a hostage in front of him or not. He was standing there firing rounds and I could see the muzzle flashes but I just couldn’t be sure enough that he was there alone.

Sierra was faced with a choice that would have had enormous consequences. In his sights was Australia’s worst mass murderer, and he had the opportunity to take him down and end the madness on behalf of all the victims, their families and the entire country. But to take the shot would have meant taking a huge risk, and disobeying a direct order.

SIERRA: I flicked the safety off and placed my finger on the trigger. I was ready in case he came out with a weapon and started firing, because that would be enough for me to justify taking him out. He would have been a threat to the snipers and compromised us all, so I could have taken a shot and I was fully prepared to. But Bryant stayed behind the thin veil of protection the flyscreen gave him and never came out. I decided not to take the shot and flicked the safety back on because under those circumstances, I would not have been justified.

Everything was silent just before sunrise when Sierra saw smoke emanating from the building. The flames began to intensify and the fire started to take hold of the cottage.

The seascape guesthouse in Port Arthur where gunman Martin Bryant held three persons hostage in an overnight siege in 1996.

HAZE: Someone thought a smoke grenade or something had been let off — it was that sort of colour — but then the fire quickly got going. A man was seen leaving the house fully clothed with a handgun, then he went back into the inferno.

SIERRA: We realised that this was all going to resolve itself soon. I called, ‘Stand to the action plan!’ and the assaulters on the ground closest to the cottages started loading onto the back of the police four-wheel drives, ready for an assault on the property.

Just when it appeared no one would survive the blaze, the front door swung open.

SIERRA:A tall individual, with nothing in their hands and long blonde hair, emerged. I could see that their back was on fire. The person was screaming because the flames consumed them. I took the safety off my rifle again. I was calm and in my breathing cycle and had my scope set to exactly 200 metres. I had this person’s head quartered in the crosshairs but didn’t know if it was a male or a female or whether it was one of the hostages or actually Bryant. I grabbed the photo of him that was stuck to the little brick wall I’d built and it looked roughly like him, but I couldn’t be 100 per cent sure. All I remember thinking is that this person I was looking at down my scope was quite feminine in appearance.

Then, still screaming and on fire, the person turned to face me and ripped their burning clothes off. I now knew who I was looking at and got a clear view of his face. It was Bryant. I watched his blonde hair burn and singe, and I called through to command that it was the offender and he was unarmed. A lot of things went through my mind, because I had another chance to shoot him. But again, I wouldn’t have been justified in doing so.

The charred remains of the Seascape guesthouse.

We don’t get paid to take lives in the SOG; we get paid to save them and put criminals like Bryant before the courts. We are ultimate professionals and don’t have the authority to make those types of calls. But I have to admit, when I had Bryant’s head quartered in my sights and had one-and-a-half pounds of my two-pound trigger taken up on my Robar SR-90, 7.62 accurised Remington 700, with a 6 to 20 inertial scope on it, I was fully prepared to take the shot.

HAZE: The house was on fire. I’ve never felt a heat quite like it before in my life. The fire was absolutely raging, and thousands of rounds of ammunition were cooking off inside. When I first glimpsed Bryant, he was a pathetic figure. He was not worth the effort in giving him a belting — he just needed to be taken away and put in a box or hole and forgotten about for the rest of his days. If there was a prison cell three feet by three feet with a small slot to put some rice and a cup of water through every day, then that’s all he deserved. He had that wisp of blonde hair and, clearly, he was on fire around the head and back of the neck area. There was skin peeling off him and it was smouldering.

I remember standing there in a semicircle with the others, all with our guns raised at Bryant, and there was this millisecond where you could have heard a pin drop, notwithstanding that we were in the middle of this surreal environment with the house burning down around us, the rounds cooking off. Our heartbeats would have been up around 150 beats per second but there was this momentary period of absolute silence.

He looked dazed and confused. He didn’t react when he saw us approaching. He was like a mannequin that was sort of stunned. Everyone knew that this was a guy who had just killed a huge amount of people and it was like, ‘Who is gonna go first here? Who is gonna shoot first?’ It obviously wasn’t going to be him, because he was unarmed and naked. There was a training instinct that kicked in, or some sort of feeling like, ‘No, we’re better than you.’ It only would have taken one of us to stand on a twig and snap it to cause everyone to open up on him, though. It would have absolutely opened up. There was every opportunity for us, or the snipers, to take a shot and kill him.

Firefighters at the scene of the guesthouse in Port Arthur, which was set alight by gunman Martin Bryant.

I yelled to the men, ‘Okay! Let’s clear the houses! Clear the houses! Get the hostages out! Check for hostages! Go! Go! Go!’ Three of the guys moved forwards and grabbed Bryant. They threw him to the ground and strapped his hands together. It was a heavy arrest. I can see the whole thing as clear and vividly as any memory that I have from any job in the SOG.

MOJO:Bryant wasn’t even complaining of the burns. It was all a bit strange. He was away with the fairies. Take away what happened at Port Arthur and even just focus on Seascape, I mean
this bloke has just come out of a burning building that almost collapsed around him because he stayed in there a hell of a long time — but there was just no substance to him. There was no expression, not even any aggression towards us. I remember thinking, ‘Is this the guy that’s done all that carnage?’ He showed no malice towards anyone, just a stupid, jovial attitude. It was just another day to him. The birds were singing, the sun was coming up and he was just staring at us.

SIERRA:I stood over him and he now had his hands strapped behind his back. I looked down
and he was just laughing. I remember staring into his piercing, chilling blue eyes. When you look into someone’s eyes, you normally see life. You see humanity, you see character, you can see love, hate, sympathy or even apathy.

You normally see something resembling that of a human being. But when I looked into Bryant’s eyes, they just looked like little pale-blue glass marbles. There was nothing there, just emptiness. I could see straight through him and he was soulless. It was so eerie and disconcerting for me. That’s something that will stay with me forever. I looked down at him laughing and I said something to him — I can’t recall what. I just pitied him for being the pathetic monster that he was.

FOR a long time after the massacre, Sierra grappled with his decision not to shoot Bryant on those two occasions.

SIERRA: I’ve thought long and hard about whether I should have pulled that trigger, but I wasn’t justified and wasn’t willing to go to jail for that pathetic individual. The better outcome was that we all saw what a weak coward he is. He’s just a pathetic waste of space.

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