Sydney's Lindt Cafe hostages plotted to stab gunman Man Horan Monis
Cafe staff reveal that they had armed themselves with box cutters during 16-hour ordeal of terror
PUBLISHED : Monday, 09 February, 2015, 12:36am
UPDATED : Monday, 09 February, 2015, 7:59am
Associated Press in Canberra
Cafe employees Jarrod Hoffman and Joel Herat said they considered stabbing the gunman. Photos: SCMP
Two staff members of a Sydney cafe have revealed how they plotted to stab a gunman who held them hostage during a 16-hour siege in December.
Joel Herat, 21, and Jarrod Hoffman, 19, said in paid interviews broadcast on Sunday by Nine Network television that they had armed themselves with box cutters after gunman Man Horan Monis took them and 16 other people hostage in the Lindt Cafe.
"I've got this knife in my pocket and I know Joel has a knife in his pocket and we are so close, we can do this," Hoffman said.
Hoffman said that if someone had jumped Monis and pinned his arms, "I would stab him in the jugular" artery in his neck.
"But he had his gun. He had it on his knee and I could see that it was pointed directly at [pregnant hostage] Julie Taylor," he said.
Herat said he contemplated stabbing Monis as Herat was forced to stand holding an Islamic flag against a cafe window.
"He was right below me sitting on the lounge and [I thought] do I stab him? What if I miss? What are the consequences of that, you know, who's he going to shoot?" Herat said.
Cafe manager Tori Johnson, 34, died when Monis shot him in the head after a second group of hostages escaped, a coroner's court was told last month.
Police then stormed the cafe, fatally shooting Monis and accidentally killing lawyer Katrina Dawson, 38, with bullet fragments that had ricocheted.
Hoffman said Monis warned the hostages that if they escaped, they would be responsible for the deaths of other hostages he would kill in retaliation.
Monis, a 50-year-old Iranian-born, self-styled cleric with a long criminal history, took the customers and workers captive and forced them to outline his demands in a series of online videos. One demanded that he be permitted to speak to Australia's prime minister and be delivered a flag of the Islamic State group.
The coroner's inquest is looking into how police managed the crisis, including whether snipers should have taken a shot at Monis through the cafe's windows.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott last week received a report on a government review of the siege and the events leading up to it. The review, expected to be released in a month, examined why Monis was free on bail despite facing a string of violent charges.
