A STRABANE woman who witnessed the Sydney siege has described the police operation as "like a scene from the movies".
Patrina Cooke (24), pictured, works in a restaurant in the same Sydney block as the Lindt café where a gunman held up to 30 people hostage during the siege yesterday.
Ms Cooke said she was "petrified" after police locked down the entire area and ordered them to close up the Avenue restaurant where she worked. "When you see Sky News
involved and helicopters involved, I was pretty much petrified. I walk past it every day to my work. If I stood at the end of my street, I could see where the incident took place," Ms Cooke told Donegal's Highland Radio.
The Co Tyrone woman said her first thought was to contact family back home to let them known that she was all right.
She also warned friends in Sydney not to come into the centre of the city because the entire area was locked down by police. "It was something I would not wish on anybody. It was such a dramatic scene," she said.
Ms Cooke said she was eventually advised that she could leave her workplace and go to an area where police were waiting. "We sat there for a while and then police escorts came and we had dogs sniffing round our bags and [police] asking us if these were our bags and if this was our property. "It's kind of like a movie scene," she said.
Ms Cooke said she eventually managed to get through to her parents in Strabane to let them know she was OK although they were unaware of the developing drama because of the time-difference between Ireland and Australia.