North Hollywood shootout
The North Hollywood shootout was an armed confrontation between two heavily-armed and armored bank robbers (Larry Eugene Phillips, Jr. and Emil Dechebal Matasareanu) and patrol and SWAT officers of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) on February 28, 1997.
The shootout resulted in the wounding of twenty people (twelve police officers and eight civilians) and the deaths of both bank robbers. Although only the suspects were killed, the sheer number of injuries made this one of the bloodiest single cases of violent crime in the 1990s, and one of the worst single bank robberies of the 20th century.
The robbery
At 9:15 a.m. that morning, Phillips and Matasareanu robbed a Bank of America branch office in North Hollywood, Los Angeles, California. Ten employees and thirty-two customers were present during the robbery. Phillips and Matasareanu managed to steal USD $303,305. One customer was injured when one of the robbers hit him in the head with the stock of an AKM. A citizen passing near the bank noticed the robbery inside and flagged a patrol car from unit 15A83 of the LAPD.
Inside the bank, Phillips kept watch in the lobby while Matasareanu forced the manager to open the vault and fill a suitcase with over three hundred thousand dollars. However, the two men had expected more. What they didn't know was that their previous robberies had caused the banks in the area to carry less cash on hand, thereby cutting losses.
"Where's the rest?!" Matasareanu stormed at the bank manager. When he learned that there was no more money, he tried to make the manager open the ATM safe, which contained tens of thousands of dollars in cash. But there was a problem with the ATM too. The security council for the B of A had put ten-minute timers on the safes to help prevent robberies. Still undaunted, Matasareanu tried to shoot open the safe, but his rounds only froze the lock completely, making it impossible to open at all.
While Matasareanu raged and swore, Phillips decided to look outside. He lumbered over to the bank's front door and peered outside.
When the cops outside saw him, they immediately thought he resembled a hollywood monster, bulging with body armor and clad in black, the sunglasses under his ski mask giving him an almost insectoid appearance. They radioed for SWAT and hunkered down to wait.
Inside, Phillips and Matasareanu had probably guessed that there was about to be a lot of shooting. They locked all of the customers and employees in the thick steel vault, where no bullets could hit them, and proceeded to exit the bank.
The shootout
Larry Phillips emerged at 0938 PST through the north door of the Bank of America. His Partner Emil Matasareanu appeared through the south door a few seconds later. Both men eyed the police, who were armed with Beretta 92FS 9 mm pistols, .38 Special revolvers, Remington M870s and Ithaca 12-gauge pump-action shotguns.
The firefight begins
Standing in the doorway of the bank, Phillips raised his Romanian-made AK-47 assault rifle and began firing at officers positioned on the north side of the bank. Instead of regular ammunition, the two gunmen were using steel-core armor-piercing bullets. These rounds, though able to penetrate far more through cover such as cars and body armor, are actually less deadly than the hollowpoint ammunition used by police, because they do not break up into such small, difficult-to-remove fragments.
Matasareanu, dragging the suitcase of money behind him, suddenly finds that red smoke is spewing from inside it. The robbers had picked up, not just one, but three dye packs used to foil robberies. The money ruined, Matasareanu abandoned it and began spraying the south side of the bank with gunfire.
Several officers went down, including Sergent Dean Haynes of the LAPD. Haynes then made a call over his police radio to his operator that "I'm hit...you better get a TAC-ALERT out."
Police from all over Los Angeles were now flocking to the chaotic scene.
Rookie officer James Zboravan, taking cover behind a locksmith's kiosk directly opposite the bank--and directly in both gunmen's lines of fire--waited until Phillips had turned around, then fired several shotgun blasts at him.
"Nine of my shotgun pellets hit Phillips," Zboravan would later recall.
The gunman seemed almost annoyed rather than in pain. Instead of falling to the ground, Phillips spun around and unloaded his 100 round drum magazine on the kiosk, and also on the officers hiding behind and around it. Zboravan was hit by two of Phillips's rounds in his lower back and buttocks as he dove for cover. Detective John Krulac, also behind the kiosk, was hit in the ankle. "It felt like somebody just took and whacked me with a board," he said of the shrapnel that entered his leg. As Phillips and Matasareanu continued to fire, Zboravan and Krulac abandoned their position behind the kiosk and moved around constantly to avoid Phillips's fire. "Phillips," Krulac said, "would take turns shooting from car to car, and we'd run from car to car," Eventually the two men managed to enter a dentist's office across from the bank, where the dentist and his nurse treated their wounds as with the materials they had on hand.
Back in front of the bank, Phillips and Matasareanu continued firing. The scene was now completely out of the control of the police; Phillips and Matasareanu were firing at anything that shot at them. Many police officers did not even fire when they got the chance, as they knew it would only provoke a hail of bullets.
"He never forgot where you were," Sgt. Dean Haynes said of Phillips. "If you shot at him, he'd just turn and spray fifty rounds at you. He was like a bear in a beehive; our rounds just didn't seem to be bothering him."
Matasareanu, however, was not protected by neck to toe body armor. He wore only a kevlar vest with a trauma plate inserted to protect his vital organs. About fifteen minutes into the shootout, Matasareanu recieved a gunshot wound to his leg, at which time he disappeared into the getaway car, a white Chevrolet Celebrity. Determined to keep fighting, he continued to fire bursts through the car's windows.
Meanwhile, Phillips continued firing. He wounded Officer Martin Whitfield, who took cover behind a tree. Whitfield bled for nearly half an hour before the confused police finally located him. He was taken to a nearby hospital and made a satisfactory recovery.
Several officers and detectives, including detective Vince Bankraft, began firing at Phillips from behind a cement wall at the rear of the bank. Phillips had now moved to the north side of the bank, where several cars were lined up in the parking lot, including the Chevy that Matasareanu was sitting in. When Bankraft and the other police and detectives fired at him, Phillips turned.
"He just turned and looked at me like, 'Who the hell are you?" Bankraft later said. Phillips opened up on the line of police behind the wall. His rounds sprayed fragments of the wall everywhere, stopping the fire. Phillips then calmly looked at the stopwatch which he had sewn into his glove. As police and detectives began to fire on him again, he picked up his AK-47 and began walking down the line of cars, firing bursts from his rifle as he did.
As Phillips continued to spray a police car at the intersection, a shotgun blast nearly took his head off. He ducked just in time to avoid the buckshot, and crouched down behind a white sports car to reload his weapon. Standing up again, he began spraying bursts at the police directly opposite the bank, then walked over to the rear of the bank and fired at the detectives behind the wall, who had resumed firing at him. A round hit him directly in the chest, nearly knocking him over. When Phillips recovered, he seemed much more wary of the gunfire. His rifle clutched in one hand, Phillips moved to the Chevy that Matasareanu was sitting inside. Opening the trunk, he threw his AK-47 inside and retrieved a new weapon--a semiautomatic HK-91 rifle.
"Suspect has retrived additional weapons from the trunk of his vehicle!" the police radio--to which Matasareanu was undoubtedly listening inside the car--informed officers. Phillips began firing randomly with the HK-91, taking a particular interest in the officers just across the street from him. He fired several rounds, then dropped the weapon to his side and wiped his brow. The two gunmen were clothed in huge amounts of heavy body armor, all colored black; the day was very hot even for a man in a tee-shirt. It is even possible that they were becoming dehydrated by this point.
Phillips walked over to the car, opened the door, and reached inside--possibly he was going to get in--but a round from detective Bankraft distracted him. The detective had been firing at Phillips; one of his rounds, a ricochette, struck the gunman's hand, while another hit the HK-91's trigger group. Instead of disabling the weapon, however, the bullet destroyed the second sear inside the gun, accidentally causing it to become a fully automatic rifle. Phillips began shooting again, walking around behind the cars and alternating between firing and ducking behind the cars to reload. At one point, Phillips was nearly decapitated by a blast that exploded the window of a nearby station wagon. He ducked and crouched down, firing on one knee at the officer who had shot at him.
As news helicopters from all around Los Angeles buzzed overhead, Phillips continued to fire wildly. Finally a helicopter from KCAL seemed to distract him. On live television, in front of millions of stunned people, Phillips lined up his weapon and began firing at the very news helicopter that was taping him. In the video of the incident, bullet trails can be seen bursting from the rifle. Finally Phillips stood up and reloaded.
The getaway
Matasareanu suddenly began backing the car out of the parking space he had been idling it in. Phillips, seeing this, grabbed his extra ammo drums off of a car hood where he had been keeping them. Emil Matasareanu drove the car up to the side of the bank and started shooting bursts at the cops trying to stop them, while Phillips hurried over to him, firing as he went. As he approached the trunk of the car, Phillips ducked to avoid a shotgun blast and then emptied the magazine, reloaded, and continued firing. A round struck his shoulder, immobilizing his left arm and most of the left side of his torso. But Phillips continued to fire the three-foot-long rifle one-handed. He moved to the door of the car twice, but each time he returned to the trunk. Finally he tossed the HK-91 into the trunk and armed himself with a Norinco Chinese Type 56 AK-47.
While Phillips tried to load the weapon one-handed--his right arm was still not moving correctly, as the video tapes reveal--Matasareanu leaned over and opened the passenger side door of the car. He seemed to want Phillips to get in, but Phillips made a movement, and probably comment, that meant no. Instead, Phillips shut the door and walked beside the car. He had apparently decided to provide cover fire for his partner.
The car and the gunman--police on their radios were referring to Phillips as "The Pedestrian"--moved away from the bank, all the way to the edge of the parking lot. Phillips, who had been carrying a second ammunition drum magazine, threw the magazine onto the top of the car and began shooting again. Then a round struck his chest, and he grabbed the drum and walked over to a champagne-colored sedan to reload. Phillips walked back to the car a minute later, firing...and kept walking.
It is possible that Phillips knew he was going to die, and wanted to take out as many cops as he could. He had already sustained a wound that would have been fatal to him; a round had severed his subclavian artery. It is quite possible that Phillips decided to buy time for Emil--his only friend in the world--to escape by sacrificing himself. Whatever Phillips was thinking, he seemed calm and collected as he ducked behind a tractor trailer on a street near the bank, allowing Emil Matasareanu to drive past him. Thanks to Phillips's supression fire, Emil drove right past the police at the end of the street, continuing on.
Meanwhile, Phillips was on the move again. He passed within feet of an abandoned police car, and began to fire again. However, Phillips suddenly realized that his AK-47 was jammed. An ejected shell casing had caught in the weapon, resulting in a stovepipe jam. Phillips, exhausted from combat, was unable to clear it. He dropped the gun on the ground and pulled a 9MM Beretta 92F from his jacket. He fired two rounds with this, then walked out from the cover of the trailer and fired again. As he fired a fourth shot, a round struck his hand, causing him to fumble and drop the pistol. Phillips bent down, picked up the handgun, and shot himself in the head. He died instantly, at the exact same time that a police sniper's bullet severed his spine. Several rounds also struck him after he went down. Phillips was twenty-six years old, and had a wife and two children.
Emil Matasareanu, further up the street, continued on. It is unclear whether or not he knew his partner was dead, but it is possible. In any case, Matasareanu tried to stop a red sedan--amazingly, a large number of oblivious civillians were still driving around the streets, unaware of what was happening--but the car drove away. Emil then began shooting at a knot of detectives who were attempting to get a shot off at him from a sidestreet. The Chevy's tires were shot out by the detectives, and Matasareanu limped around and got back into his car. He began driving slowly up the street, trying to stop cars that he ran into. Finally he came head-to-head with a Jeep pickup truck. When Matasareanu fired his weapon in the general direction of the truck, the driver began backing up, then got out and fled to a nearby house. Matasareanu drove up next to the truck, got out, and then got back in his car again. He inched the car forward a bit--he had been unable to open the door, as they were too close together--and got back out, tossing his garage door opener into the truck as he passed it. Matasareanu then limped over to the Chevy's trunk and retrieved an automatic Bushmaster M-16 rifle, equipped with a 100-round Beta C-mag drum magazine. He threw this into the truck as well, then turned back to get another weapon from the trunk. Instead he found that a police cruiser containing three North Hollywood SWAT officers was barrelling towards him. Matasareanu raised his weapon and fired several rounds, then got into the Jeep. What Matasareanu didn't know was that the driver had taken the keys with him as he fled. After unsuccessfully trying to start the truck several times, Matasareanu finally gave up and bailed just as the SWAT unit screeched to a stop less than ten yards away.
Running behind the hood of the Chevy, Matasareanu used it as a shield as he began firing wildly with his M-16. At the same time, SWAT officers fired back, jumping out of their car and hiding behind it. Finally Matasareanu stopped shooting, and lowered his weapon. SWAT continued to shoot at him. Suddenly Emil Matasareanu hoisted his weapon up and sprayed the cars with a burst of gunfire.
SWAT officers lay on the ground and began shooting Emil's feet and legs, which were unarmored. Other police officers began firing from the side streets and even houses where they had been taking cover. Finally Matasareanu collapsed, his rifle going off into the pavement as he staggered and fell against the hood of his getaway car. He raised his hands in a gesture of surrender, but when police continued to shoot at him, he placed his M-16 on the ground and began spraying rounds under the cars at SWAT. Eventually Matasareanu was hit so many times that he could no longer shoot and was forced to drop his weapon all together.
When SWAT stopped shooting, they moved in carefully on the injured gunman, who was directing obscenities at the SWAT officers, the LAPD, and police in general.
One SWAT officer kicked Emil's gun away from him, then kicked Emil himself in the head. Another officer stomped on the man's legs while he swore at them, and a third stepped on the gunman's back and shoved a rifle in his face. Finally the angry SWAT officers were called to search for more gunmen, and officers John Futrell and James Vojtecky were assigned to guard Matasareanu.
Outcome
During the shootout, a total of twelve officers and two civilians were wounded (although only one severely), and there were two fatalities (Phillips and Matasareanu.) The LAPD was later criticized for refusing to allow Matasareanu to receive medical attention, which could have been life-saving; the department countered by stating that ambulance personnel were following standard procedure in hostile situations by refusing to enter "the hot zone", as Matasareanu was still considered to be dangerous. In addition, there were also onlooker reports of other suspects in the area, which further delayed the ambulance response. These reports were later determined by the authorities to be sightings of plainclothes police officers wearing body armor.
Another version of the tale has been told by LAPD officer James Vojtecky, who was one of the officers assigned to the scene where Matasareanu was being held. According to Officer Vojtecky, he instructed other officers "Don't let this man move. He's trying to bleed out on us. He's trying to kill himself."
During the trial, the lawyer of Matasareanu's children, Stephen Yagman, showed jurors a news videotape that showed two police officers slapping hands in a congratulatory gesture; one of the officers then kicks the handcuffed suspect. A photo taken by a press photographer--who had managed get so close that Matasareanu had begun yelling cursewords at him--showed Officer John Futrell smirking as he pushed Matasareanu's face into the pavement.
Both stories have been hotly disputed both in and out of court. It is unclear what really happened to Matasareanu.
A third version has been accepted by some people. There is some evidence that when Matasareanu, who had recently had surgery to remove a tumor from his brain, was kicked by a SWAT officer arresting him, the blow caused bleeding inside his brain. This theory cannot be proven, however, as Matasareanu was cremated and therefore his body cannot be exhumed.
This shooting bore similarities to both an actual earlier shootout in Norco, California on May 9, 1980 and a fictional incident in the movie Heat. There was speculation that Phillips and Matasareanu used Heat as a training film.
Facts
- Larry Phillips was shot 11 times, and Emil Matasareanu was shot 29 times.
- Both Phillips and Matasareanu were bodybuilders.
- Emil Matasareanu suffered from epilepsy.
- Larry Phillips was, by trade, a real-estate salesman.
- Emil Matasareanu grew up in a mental home run by his mother. As a young man he was seriously injured by a blow from one of the patients.
- Matasareanu had brain surgery a few weeks prior to the heist.
- Larry Phillips cut up several armor vests and fashioned himself arm and leg guards with the kevlar; the protection swathed him from neck to ankles and weighed nearly 42 pounds.
- The two men had robbed several banks previous to the one on Laurel Canyon. In the early 1990s they held up an armored car in Denver. They only obtained $23,000 from this robbery, however. Then several years later, Phillips and Matasareanu robbed another armored car, getting away with $125,000. Their next robbery was a failure; the armored car they attempted to stop kept driving and the robbers were forced to abandon the heist. Several weeks later, they entered a Bank of America, and got away with over $750,000 in cash--a huge score at the time. Their next robbery took place at the very bank they had done their second armored car robbery in front of. This time the gunmen netted a total of over $790,000.
- Only one person was seriously injured durning the entire firefight, apart from the gunmen. Officer Martin Whitfield (Ret.) was shot in the leg and was unconcious when he was rescued by police in an armored car and taken to a nearby hospital. He survived his wounds.
- Approximately 370 LAPD officers were called to the scene.
- Other than the LAPD, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department and units of the California Highway Patrol (CHP) responded to the scene. In the MVP documentary film, the LAPD sergeant being interviewed discusses the roles of those agencies as well as LA Airport PD, Burbank PD and LA School PD. Off-duty LAPD officers came in prior to the announcement of city-wide TAC-ALERT, which activates all personnel on duty. Members of the LAPD training at the Valley area police academy as well as the main LA police academy located in Elysian Park also responded. SWAT officers also responded from the police academy. One response was from Chief Willie Williams, who came from either Parker Center or LAPD HQ located downtown.
- The following year, seventeen LAPD officers were awarded Medals of Valor from the department for their actions and bravery during the shootout. They were:
- Police Sergeant I. Medina
- Police Detective T. Angeles
- Police Detective V. Bancroft
- Police Detective T. Culotta
- Police Detective K. Harley
- Police Officer Class III D. Anderson
- Police Officer E. Brentlinger
- Police Officer Class III A. Cabunoc
- Police Officer Class III J. Caprarelli
- Police Officer E. Dominguez
- Police Officer Class III S. Gomez
- Police Officer Class III R. Massa
- Police Officer C. Perriguey
- Police Officer T. Schmitz
- Police Officer C. Torrez
- Police Officer J. Zboravan
- Police Officer R. Zielinski
Aftermath
The incident highlighted the growing divergence between the means available to the police and the offensive and defensive technologies employed by criminals. Video footage of the incident clearly shows police pistol bullets striking the suspects with little or no effect, largely due to the body armor worn by the suspects. Their body armor was able to stop the .38 caliber and 9 mm projectiles fired by the officers' service handguns.
The ineffectiveness of the pistol rounds in penetrating the suspects' body armor led to a trend in the United States towards arming selected police patrol officers with .223 caliber/5.56 mm M16 Rifles altered to prevent automatic fire. This provided first responders with greater ability to effectively confront and neutralize heavily armed and armored criminals.
Advocates of gun control in the United States cited the incident as evidence that U.S. gun control laws were inadequate to prevent military-class weaponry ending up in the hands of prior felons. Opponents of gun control counter that as the weapons had been obtained illegally; the incident did not indicate that criminal use of legally registered fully-automatic firearms was a problem.
The LAPD patrol officers were not adequately armed or protected to deal with such criminals. The gunmen were firing rifle rounds from illegally-modified fully-automatic assault rifles while being protected by full body armor. The officers' handguns and shotguns could not penetrate through the suspects' armor, while the suspects' weapons were capable of severely wounding officers and bystanders even through cement walls and automobiles.
The family of Emil Matasareanu sued the LAPD for wrongful death because of their refusal to allow the ambulances arriving on the scene to treat him. After a hung jury in the first trial, the Matasareanu family dropped the suit.
In a final note, an anti-gun legislation sued the B&B Guns store, eventually forcing it to shut down. B&B Guns supplied the police with several assault rifles to combat the two armored gunmen, and did not wait "the required period for a background check on the recipients." In other words, the gun store that lent the police long guns was sued for not waiting ten days to hand them over. B&B Guns is no longer in business; the lawsuit forced the store to close.
Movies
- 44 Minutes: The North Hollywood Shoot-Out at IMDb
- 2005 documentary Shootout! North Hollywood Shootout created by the History Channel describing the event in detail with interviews from the involved police officers.
- North Hollywood Shootout documentary by Music Video Productions (MVP) (mostly interviews).
- In the opening scenes of the action film S.W.A.T.. Weapons, location, events, TV footage, and dialog from LAPD radio communcations of this shootout were all closely mimicked. (A deleted scene in the movie also included police officers running into a gun store to purchase M16 assault rifles citing the ineffective weaponry they had been supplied).
- A video was produced by the POST training association that contained the entire video of the shootout; however this video is not available to the public.
- The Learning Channel produced a two-hour program dubbed "Officer Down".
- World's Wildest Police Videos, Modern Marvels, Investigative Reports, and various other TV shows have done segments about the gunfight.
Sources
- North Hollywood LAPD's radio traffic frequency
- Nancy J. Rigg. "Maintaining Control". Retrieved 2006-06-29. Transcript of portions of separate police frequencies referring to the North Hollywood shootout.
- "Los Angeles Police Department - 1998 Medal of Valor Recipients". 1998. Retrieved 2006-06-29.
External links
- Radio recording & summary
- Police viewpoint
- A tribute to the two men, made in 1998. Includes a bio of both Phillips and Matasareanu, and a break down of the robbery.
- Norco shootout
- Video
- Stovepipe_Jam's video collection has some extremely rare video footage, as well as pictures. Courtesy of SJ Norinco.
- More videos can also be found in a second collection here, including the movie Honor Among Thieves: The North Hollywood Shootout.
- Gone But Not Forgotten is a group devoted to the shootout.
- Hellbent, a poem written by Honey Sheperd, who witnessed the gunfight firsthand.