Jarrod Morton-Hoffman tells inquest of being showered in glass as they fumbled to open the main door with gunman Man Haron Monis in close pursuit

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

Former Lindt employee Jarrod Morton-Hoffman has described how hostages were fired at and showered in glass as they fled in the final minutes of the December 2014 siege of the Lindt cafe.

Sydney siege inquest: hostage tried to pass coded messages to police Read more

Morton-Hoffman told a coronial inquest on Wednesday that Man Haron Monis was growing “increasingly agitated and increasingly paranoid” as the siege stretched into its 16th hour.

Around 2:03am, Monis arranged two hostages as human shields around him and went to check a fire exit, where he was concerned police were gathering to raid the cafe.

Unbeknown to the gunman, Morton-Hoffman had been slipping written messages to the police under the fire door, which he now feared Monis would find. “I figured if he opened the door it would be definite death for the rest of us,” he said.

He said he saw a last opportunity to escape. “I’m going,” he said he told the assembled hostages, making for the cafe’s lobby entrance.

As he and five others made a run for it, someone knocked a glass cup, shattering it and catching Monis’ attention.

“I heard the sound of glass smashing on the ground, it shattered,” Morton-Hoffman said. “I heard Monis scream, what was that?”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Sydney siege survivor Jarrod Morton-Hoffman at the Lindt cafe inquest on Tuesday. Photograph: Brendan Esposito/AAP

They burst into the lobby and were showered in glass from a round fired just above their heads by the gunman. Another hostage, Joel Herat, screamed “He’s chasing us!” as Morton-Hoffman fumbled to open the main door.

He located a door release button and led the five hostages into Martin Place, making sure to “run wide” so police stationed along the perimeter of the cafe could take a clear shot if Monis emerged behind the escapees. “We didn’t want to be caught between those two parties,” he said.

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Minutes later, the gunman killed the cafe’s manager, Tori Johnson. A second hostage, Katrina Dawson, was accidentally killed during the police raid at 2:14am.

The inquest also heard on Wednesday that Monis had been extremely volatile throughout the siege, switching “almost instantaneously” from blind rage to a more jovial mood.

At one stage, as he was forcing hostages to produce videos to be posted on social media, he “joked he was like a director” and suggested another hostage of Indian origin “would be suspected as the terrorist”, Morton-Hoffman said.

As his fears of a police raid surged, Monis assured hostages: “I have a plan, don’t worry about me.”

“He never went into any details of what that plan was, he just stated that he had one,” Morton-Hoffman said.

Around 11pm, when Monis said he needed to smoke, Morton-Hoffman said he suggested he use the cafe’s freezer, which had only one smoke alarm that could be insulated in Gladwrap.

The 20-year-old said he thought “we could close the door with [Monis] inside. I figured that if he was to release one round of his shotgun into it, it would most likely kill him and not go through the door”.

Monis felt the plan was too convoluted and instead blew his cigarette smoke into a bottle, he said.

A police surveillance device recorded Monis saying around 11:23pm that he regretted not shooting Stefan Balafoutis, a hostage he called “white shirt”, who had escaped earlier in the day.

“I feel bad I didn’t shoot white shirt when I had the chance,” the recording device captured Monis saying.

Asked to give his impression of the gunman, Morton-Hoffman said Monis was an “amateur”.

“He allowed for hostages to do his bidding with a large amount of autonomy, which allowed us in essence to make plans. He had no one to rely upon, really,” he said.

“It seemed as if he had no set plan apart from to make chaos.”