A former police sniper says he is still living with guilt after failing to kill an armed terrorist who took 18 people hostage in a Lindt Cafe almost a decade ago.
Mark Davidson was on duty when the Lindt Cafe siege unfolded in Martin Place in Sydney on December 15, 2014 and was stationed in a Westpac building opposite the cafe.
Terrorist Man Haron Monis was armed with a rifle and claimed he had a bomb when he barricaded himself and almost 20 other innocent civilians inside the cafe.
Monis shot and killed Tori Johnson, 34, while Katrina Dawson, 38, was killed by police bullet fragments when authorities stormed the cafe after 17 hours of hostage negotiations.
Mr Davidson said he and his colleagues had a 10-minute window to kill Monis when visibility of the terrorist was good, but explained he ultimately chose not to fire his weapon.
This would prove a decision that would continue to consume him with guilt nine years on.
“What I was not wanting to do was trigger the detonation of a bomb by shooting him at that time,” Mr Davidson explained on SBS Insiders on Tuesday night.
“Tori Johnson got killed because that opportunity never arose again. We had that 10-minute window from 7.38pm to 7.48pm — it never existed again.”
Mr Davidson said in the days after the shooting, he was “quite calm” but his mental health started to deteriorate soon after the incident.
“Over a period of months and weeks afterwards and years afterwards, I was exhausted by flashbacks of Tori dying the way he did, and not being able to save him when I could,” he said.
“I actually had guilt for not killing someone which is an unusual way of putting it because most normal people have an inherent resistance to killing another human.”
“Through a process of training in the military and police, you go through periods of desensitising yourself to that in periods where you can justify doing so. So when the time comes you can do what you need to do.
“It wasn’t rational in the sense that I didn’t commit the siege and I didn’t cause him to die, but there’s a very real feeling of guilt because he could have been saved by me or my colleagues at the time we saw him.”
Mr Davidson said while he tried to “hang in there” as best as possible, he began having panic attacks at work when there was “no real reason to panic”.
The former sniper said the effects of his guilt caused by the siege contributed to a breakdown in his marriage after 24 years.