Sydney siege: Window two, hostage down: the last moments

“WINDOW two, hostage down.” In four chilling words, the nation’s worst fears had come true inside the Lindt cafe.

“WINDOW two, hostage down.” In four chilling words, the nation’s worst fears had come true inside the Lindt cafe.

There was no time to talk, no time to think — only time for the police to crash into the darkened shop in the dead of night to save whoever they could from the clutches of a madman.

For the next 30 seconds a hellish fury was unleashed as the cafe, with at least seven hostages still inside, was lit by a deafening fuselage of gun shots and stun grenades.

The silence that followed was broken only by the screams of the injured. The Sydney siege was suddenly over, ending an act of terror that had held Australia and much of the world captive for 16 hours.

PDF: How the siege ended

The smoke cleared, revealing a heartbreaking sight. Katrina Dawson, a 38-year-old barrister and mother of three children under 10, lay gravely injured. In the week ­before Christmas, Dawson, an ­acclaimed young legal talent, had been getting her morning coffee with her pregnant colleague Julie Taylor when she was captured.

Tori Johnson, the manager of the Lindt store, who reportedly grappled with the gunman ­moments before a shot rang out, also lay fatally wounded. Three other hostages, Selina Win Pe, Marcia Mikhael and a 75-year-old woman, lay around the cafe nursing bullet wounds.

Among the debris was the body of the gunman, Man Haron Monis, a self-styled sheik and misfit who was well known to police and was on bail for being an ­accessory to murder and for sexual offences. Nearby was the Islamic flag that Monis had forced his hostages to hold up against the window to advertise his claim that he was acting in the name of the Sunni terror group Islamic State, despite the fact that he was from Shia-dominated Iran.

The bloody end to the siege was as quick as it was unexpected. The previous day, police had tried ­patiently to negotiate with the 50-year-old in the hours after he had taken about 17 people hostage ­inside the Martin Place cafe that morning. About 12 people were left, including two pregnant women, after five people escaped the previous day.

As the day wore on, Monis ­appeared to become increasingly frustrated that his demands were not being met. He ordered hostages to contact media outlets and forced three of them to make ­videos in which they repeated Monis’s demands that he be sent an Islamic State flag and that he be allowed to talk directly with Tony Abbott. The police decided to wait it out, a tactic that would see the fugitive eventually tire and ­increase the prospect that more people might safely escape the shop in the middle of the night, as had happened the previous day.

Police were encouraged by the fact that Monis had not given any sign that he was getting ready to execute any hostages.

About 1.50am Seven Network news reporter Chris Reason, who was watching the cafe from the network’s studio with a police sniper, said the gunman appeared to become disturbed. He began shuffling hostages from one end of the cafe to the other.

“The gunman appeared agitated, he didn’t know what to do with them,’’ Reason said. “He was sort of corralling them down one end and then down the other and moving around sort of randomly.’’

TIMELINE: Sydney siege

He said that as one group of hostages was moved to one end of the cafe a second group were left behind at the other.

“And they were the group that made the initial break for freedom at three minutes past two this morning,’’ he said.

One man ran out of the cafe and lay down on the ground as police approached. Another group of hostages, including Joel Herat and Harriette Denny, IT worker Vishwakant Ankit Reddy and lawyer Julie Taylor, ran out shortly ­afterwards. From across Martin Place, Reason said there were several minutes of silence after the hostages fled. “Then we heard a loud shot ring out,’’ Reason said.

It may have been the knowledge that some of his hostages had escaped that prompted Monis to fire what one source close to the investigation said was, initially, a single shot into the air.

The Australian has been told that a second shot followed ­quickly, this one aimed at Johnson who died from his wounds.

Reason said: “Shortly after five past two we heard that shot ring out and the sniper beside me …. said into his radio: ‘Window two, hostage down’.

“Now at that point it seemed like only seconds went by but the police decided that they had no ­alternative but to move in on the cafe and from both sides they moved in quickly.”

Police declined to confirm reports Johnson was grappling with the gunman when he was shot.

Monis’s decision to open fire prompted police to charge the cafe rather than any change of tactics on the part of police.

From the main entrance of the cafe and from another entrance, about a dozen police stormed into the cafe. No bombs were found, despite Monis’s claims that he had placed at least three devices across the city.

Among the injured who were carried out of the cafe was Marcia Mikhael, a Westpac executive who had delivered rolling Facebook posts as the drama unfolded yesterday.

GALLERY: Faces of the hostage crisis

“Dear friends and family,” she wrote. “I’m at the Lindt cafe at Martin Place being held hostage by a member of the (Islamic State). The man who is keeping us hostage has asked for small and simple requests and none have been met.

“He is now threatening to start killing us. We need help right now. The man wants the world to know that Australia is under attack by the Islamic State.”

Police are still hunting for a motive for the attack. The day before his attack, Monis reportedly vowed on his personal website to fight the “oppression and terrorism of (the) USA and its allies including (the) UK and Australia”.

But Monis was a man with many grievances about Australia and about his life.

He believed he was a victim of the justice system and that ASIO among others was conspiring against him. He appeared more misfit than terrorist.

GALLERY: Siege ends

By contrast, his innocent victims in the Sydney siege have been embraced by a sorrowful nation.

By late yesterday the small pile of flowers laid by mourners in Martin Place had bloomed into a vast sea of floral tributes. People were queueing for hours to pay their respects.

It was a spontaneous statement of love and resolve, a determination that this single act of madness would not cow the spirit of Australians.