Via The Advocate
On the otherwise ordinary summer morning of December 15, 2014, an unprecedented terror gripped Sydney. In the heart of the city’s business district, an unhinged Islamic radical named Man Haron Monis strode into a Lindt chocolate cafe with a sawed-off shotgun, took 18 people hostage, and began an anguishing 16-hour standoff. Australian police forces stormed the cafe in the early hours of the next day, but by then the cafe’s manager, Tori Johnson, had been killed.
Because of an ongoing investigation, there are no formal accounts of exactly what transpired in the tense lead-up to the tragedy’s climax, but unconfirmed media reports indicate that Johnson was killed after attempting to wrestle the gunman for control of the weapon. In the final blitz, another hostage, a barrister named Katrina Dawson, was killed in the hailstorm of bullets. It was quickly reported that she was married with three young children, and that Johnson had a “partner” of 14 years. Then we waited, or at least I did, to find out whether his long-term partner was a man.
