Infamous America - [ENCORE] NORTH HOLLYWOOD ROBBERY Ep. 4 | “Officers Down”

Episode Date: January 28, 2026

The robbery escalates. Dr. Jorge Montes, a dentist whose office is across the street from Bank of America, helps Detective John Krulac and Officer James Zboravan. Robbers Larry Phillips and Emil Matasareanu continue the shootout and their slow escape. Officer Martin Whitfield’s situation becomes critical. Members of the SWAT team race through the city to the scene of the robbery. And the first news helicopter arrives to broadcast the shootout to the nation in real time. Thanks to our sponsor, Quince! Use this link for Free Shipping and 365-day returns: Quince.com/infamousamerica Thanks to our sponsor, Rocket Money! Use this link to start saving today: RocketMoney.com/InfamousA Join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join   Apple users join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes, bingeable seasons and bonus episodes. Click the Black Barrel+ banner on Apple to get started with a 3-day free trial.   On YouTube, subscribe to INFAMOUS+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: hit “Join” on the Legends YouTube homepage.   For more details, please visit www.blackbarrelmedia.com. Our social media pages are: @blackbarrelmedia on Facebook and Instagram, and @bbarrelmedia on Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In just eight minutes, Larry Phillips and Emil Matasarano had turned North Hollywood into a war zone. It was just after 9.30 a.m., and both men were outside the Bank of America at 6,600 Laurel Canyon Boulevard in the San Fernando Valley. With overwhelming firepower and a seemingly endless supply of ammunition, they had destroyed two police cruisers in an intersection north of the bank and laid waste to cars in a parking lot across the street. LAPD officers did their best to fire back, but their handguns and shotguns were well out of their effective range. The gunmen were now on the move, continuing to unload automatic fire at any sign of the police. Officers were reported down north and south of the bank and across the street in the Valley Plaza Mall parking lot. Inside the bank, nearly two dozen bank employees and customers huddled in the vault, praying that the gunmen would say,

stay outside. The robbers hadn't killed anyone, but they had roughed up a few customers and the assistant bank manager. Dispatcher Twanya Bellard tried to wrangle the chaos as best she could. She fielded terrifying descriptions of the scene from the officers there and relayed them to the incident commander. Before long, one of the two most consistent questions was, when was SWAT going to arrive? The Special Weapons and Tactics Unit was the only one that was equipped to handle a shootout of this magnitude. Unfortunately, Bellard had no answer. She didn't have an estimated time of arrival for SWAT. The other consistent question, and the one that was far more distressing than the ETA of the SWAT team, was the request for assistance. Radio calls came in from all over the area that asked for help

for officers and civilians who had been shot. Bellard could only tell people to hold on. They were working on it. North of the bank, Officer Martin Whitfield had been shot several times. He sat on the grass with nothing but a skinny tree for protection against the gunmen. The rifle fire seemed endless, and it seemed to be getting louder. The shooters must have been moving in his direction. In the parking lot across the street from the bank, Detective Tracy Angeles, and Officer Stuart Guy were both shot and taking cover behind parked cars. their respective partners, Detective John Krulak, and Officer James Zaboravan, had also been injured in the parking lot,

but they'd been able to dive through a door to the mall and scramble up a flight of stairs to escape the direct gunfire. The gunmen had been in complete control of the area and the situation for about 15 minutes. They had amply demonstrated they had no problem shooting it out with police, but they also didn't want to get caught, and they had no reservations about dying. As they began their getaway from the bank, the North Hollywood shootout escalated to yet another level. And soon, the whole country would be able to watch it live on TV. From Black Barrel Media, this is Infamous America.

I'm your host, Chris Wimmer. In this season, we're telling the story of the North Hollywood robbery and the unprecedented battle between two gunmen and the Los Angeles Police Department. This is episode four, Officers Down. Like everyone else who became involved in the events of Friday, February 28, 1997, the day began like any other for Dr. Jorge Montez. He and his wife ran a small dental practice out of their second floor office in the Valley Plaza Mall. But by a few minutes after 9 a.m., he knew something was wrong.

None of his patients had arrived. Twenty minutes later, his waiting room was still empty, and he looked out of his office window. The parking lot of the Valley Plaza Mall was spread out below him. His minivan was parked near the door that led into the staircase that led up to his office. Bank of America Branch 384 was directly across the street and occupied the entire 6,600 block of Laurel Canyon Boulevard, and there was a lone police car sitting in Laurel Canyon Boulevard south of the bank. As Montez's mind shifted from wondering about his patience to more critically assess, assessing the scene below him, he noticed more things that were alarming. Two cop cars screeched to a

halt in the intersection of Laurel Canyon and Archwood north of the bank. Three civilians ran to the cars and started talking to the officers. They gestured wildly at the bank. By the time he saw four officers, two in regular clothes and two in uniform, take a position behind the kiosk in the middle of the parking lot below him, he realized what was happening. The bank was being robbed. Police cars continued to arrive. Officers fanned out. They blocked off the streets in the area, and they all had their guns drawn. A moment later, Montez watched a masked man exit the north doors of the bank with what Montes thought was a machine gun. The gunmen surveyed the scene and then opened fire on the cops in the intersection to the north. One of the first

thoughts that registered in Montez's mind was that he couldn't believe how loud the shots were, even to him, 300 feet away in a concrete building. Montez watched the gunmen alternate between firing at the cops to the north and firing at the cops in the parking lot below his window. He was transfixed by the surreal scene, and then he ordered his staff to move back, deeper into the office, and he drew the blinds across the window. But he himself stayed near the glass. He couldn't look away. And that was how he knew that the situation in his parking lot went from bad to worse to desperate.

The female officer in plain clothes and one of the officers in uniform were trapped in a row of parked cars. The man in uniform was shot. When the woman tried to move closer to him, she was shot as well. The male officer in plain clothes and the other officer in uniform were huddled behind his minivan, which was now riddled with bullet holes. They were both injured and bleeding,

and then a second gunman emerged from the bank. Together, the gunmen blanketed the area with loud, relentless rifle fire. They had created an arc of several hundred feet around the bank that was essentially a kill zone. The two officers who were crouched behind Montez's minivan were squarely in that zone, and they obviously knew it. Montez watched as they made a decision. They stood up as best they could with their injuries

and hurried toward the door that led to the staircase that led up to his office. Montez heard the glass door shatter. He heard the calamitous scramble of the men as they lurched up the stairs and crashed onto the landing outside his office door. Montez cautiously crept to his door and opened it a crack. He saw a man whom he would come to know as Detective John Crewel Rulak, pointing a pump-action shotgun down the stairs at the door.

He was bleeding from his lower leg, but the officer in uniform who lay on the floor at the base of the office door looked worse. Rookie officer James Zaboravan, who was just two months out of the police academy, was bleeding badly from his leg and his back. And on top of that, with his office door open and the door at the bottom of the stairs blown out, Montez experienced a more unfiltered version of the gunfire. It was almost literally deafening. He couldn't imagine what it must have been like out there on the street.

But all those thoughts and sensations happened in fractions of seconds. Officer Zaboravan needed help. Montez opened his door, and he and Detective Krulak moved Zaboravan into the office. There was a gash six inches long and an inch deep across Zborovan's back. It was littered with chunks of glass. The officer's adrenaline was fading. He was starting to feel the pain, and he was in danger of going into shock. Montez called out to his wife and their assistance.

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And they have a 100-day satisfaction guarantee. Mood.com promo code infamous. It was now 9.31 a.m. Just 14 minutes had passed since Larry Phillips and Emil Matasarano entered the Bank of America. With Mada Seranu hauling the duffel bag and Phillips taking point, they moved toward the north parking lot and their Chevy Celebrity Getaway car. Phillips laid down suppressing fire while Mada Seranu lumbered behind him. At some point between leaving the bank and arriving at the car,

it appeared as though Monteseranu was hit in the leg. He kept moving, but now he was limping badly. The whole robbery progressed so slowly that it was easy for some people to believe, after the fact that Larry Phillips in particular wanted the fight. It might have been true, there's no way to know, but he certainly wasn't shying away from it as he and his partner trudged toward their getaway car. In the LAPD dispatch center,

Twania Bellard did her best to visualize the complex situation and maintain composure. In a Hollywood movie, she would have been sitting in front of a wall of screens with a hundred camera angles of the scene as she coordinated the response. In the real world, she only had radio traffic and a chalkboard that a supervisor had rolled up to her desk. She heard reports that the gunmen were moving north, in the direction of Officer Whitfield, Sergeant Dean Haynes, and three civilians, almost all of whom were injured.

She urged officers to take a shot at the gunman if they had it. A frantic response came back, this guy is not going down, he's got heavy body armor. Another officer said coldly, go for the head. At the command center, a half a mile south of the bank, the field commander ordered units to go to a nearby gun store called B&B Gun Shop and commandeer rifles to fight the gunmen. It was a move straight out of the Old West. But ironically, after officers finally got a hold of the owner

and left with AR-15s, the guns were never used in the fight. On the second floor of Lavalry Plaza Mall, Dr. Jorge Montez worked on Officer Zaboravans' injuries. Montes was finally able to slow the bleeding of the ugly wound to Zborovans' back. He applied topical anesthetic to give the officer some relief, and then he worried about Detective Krulak. A piece of shrapnel was buried in Kruak's ankle. The wound was nasty, but Montez was rightfully scared to try to remove the metal shard. He wasn't a battlefield medic or a trauma surgeon or even a medical doctor. He was a dentist.

If he made a wrong move, he could damage an artery that might cause an unstoppable flow of blood. Montez simply wasn't equipped to handle something like that. He did what he could to make the injury more manageable, but the shrapnel had to stay. Krulak could tolerate it. He was a Vietnam veteran, and he could suck it up and keep going. Right now, he had more important problems to deal. with. He needed to organize a plan to get Zaborvan to a proper medical facility. And they, all of them, some of them, someone, needed to find a way to get to Detective Angelus, an officer

guy, in the parking lot without getting killed in the process. Gunfire toward the Valley Plaza parking lot had steadily lessened as the gunmen slowly worked their way north, but it hadn't stopped. Any obvious movement could attract their attention. Crulag didn't know if a rescue plan was in the works, but he wouldn't have to wait long to find out. In the meantime, there were two new developments in the rapidly evolving situation. Members of the Metro Division SWAT team were rallying and racing to the scene. And, almost certainly to the anger of the police, the first news helicopter was screaming through the sky toward North Hollywood. The shootout was going live. Los Angeles was the first city in America to witness the use of a local news helicopter.

helicopter. Local channel KTLA started the trend in 1958. Other channels quickly followed suit, and before long, reporters were on the scene of an event in record time and broadcasting from high overhead straight into the living rooms of viewers. And it didn't take long for another new trend to develop. High speed chases and police takedowns became must-watch entertainment. In the 1990s, like many things, the trend of live TV chaos rose to new levels as L.A. became home to events that have been immortalized in TV history. News helicopters broadcast the disturbing images of the 1992 Los Angeles riots to audiences across the country. Two years later, virtually every helicopter in the city shadowed a legion of police cars as they followed a white Ford Bronco on the four of four of four. Freeway. In the back of the Bronco was Hall of Fame NFL player and accused murderer O.J. Simpson.

And now, three years after the most famous slow speed chase in American history, the news helicopter for local channel K-Cal 9 rushed to North Hollywood to broadcast a gun battle on Laurel Canyon Boulevard. Right before the news helicopter arrived, Phillips and Matasurano made it to their getaway car. But Montessaranu, now clearly limping, dropped the duffel bag. Fifteen minutes earlier in the first seconds of the robbery, which now seemed like a lifetime ago, Assistant bank manager John Villagrana had thrown a bundle of money into the bag that was loaded with a dye pack. As the robbers moved farther from the bank, the distance triggered the sensor on the dye pack, and the pack exploded.

Red dye now covered all the money in the bag. The $300,000 in cash was worthless. The robber's only hope now was to shoot their way out. Mada Seranu dropped the bag and limped to the driver's side door of the car. At that point, he may have been grazed in the head. He lifted his hand toward the side of his face and then leaned over one of the parked cars. He left a red handprint on its hood, but the stain could have been from the die pack. No one knew for sure.

and if he was hit, it wasn't enough to stop him. While Manasarano struggled near the driver's side door, Larry Phillips went straight for the trunk of the car. Inside, there were three more rifles and more than a thousand rounds of ammunition. Phillips grabbed a heckler and Coke 91A3 rifle. It was a semi-automatic weapon that had been banned for import into the U.S. for almost 10 years. It held fewer rounds than Phillips Chinese-made Narinco Type 56 rifle, but it had nearly double the effective range.

Phillips used his new weapon to continue to target officers north of the bank, and then he noticed a new element in the shootout. He looked up into the sky and saw the news helicopter for local channel K-Cal-9. The chopper approached from the south. It flew over the LAPD Field Command Center and d, dozens of emergency vehicles that were stacked up and ready to help. From the chopper's point of view, the scene on Laurel Canyon Boulevard actually looked calm. It was hard to tell that a lopsided gunfight had been raging for 15 minutes.

But as the helicopter's camera zoomed in, viewers could see the immense damage that had been done by automatic rifles. The chopper chose to hover over the north parking lot of the bank, which put it right above Larry Phillips. Phillips' new rifle was accurate at up to a half a mile. He raised it toward the sky and began to fire at the chopper. It registered with the men in the chopper that they might be in danger. The reporter said live on the air, What my pilot Dean tells me now is that they're firing at us right now. The chopper banked hard away from the north parking lot and zoomed south to hover at a safer distance.

When the chopper was clear of immediate gunfire, it repositioned its camera, and the viewers at home could settle in and watch the second act of the North Hollywood shootout play out on their TVs. Matasaranu crawled in behind the wheel of the old car. Phillips took a position behind an SUV that was parked next to the getaway car and kept firing at the vehicles that blocked their possible escape. Occasionally, he dropped down to reload. When he did, the police returned fire.

Then Phillips popped back up again and let loose. Madisarano finally got the car moving. TV audiences watched as the car backed out of its spot. The driver's side faced the officers in the intersection of Laurel Canyon and Archwood, who were still taking heavy fire, and Matasurano fired briefly from a Bushmaster XM15 rifle that was equipped with a 100-round magazine. The news chopper overhead broadcast the automatic gunfire tearing into police cars that were already shredded. officers ducked and retreated.

A civilian near one of the cars bled profusely on the pavement. The robbers continued their slow, haphazard escape, and it still looked like they had the upper hand. But that wouldn't last long. Earlier that morning, as Phillips and Matasaranu drove to the bank, SWAT officer Rick Massa was heading to the LAPD Academy in Elysian Fields, a neighborhood in Los Angeles close to downtown and Dodger Stadium. Massa was meeting fellow SWAT team members for a training run.

There was a departmental relay race coming up and bragging rights were on the line. But as Massa and fellow SWAT officer Steve Gomez were about to get started, one of their colleagues, Don Anderson, sped into the lot and slammed on his brakes. He had just fielded a radio call from SWAT headquarters. Police were involved in a shootout in North Hollywood. There was a tactical alert and SWAT had been requested. Massa and Gomez jumped in their cars. Like Anderson, they drove Ford Crown Victoria's.

The cars used to be unmarked units, but they had recently been painted black and white like every other car in the fleet. The cars didn't have light bars on their roofs, just flashing lights mounted on the dashboard. Every vehicle had a radio, but that radio only communicated with their SWAT headquarters. They couldn't hear any of the radio traffic from the scene or Twanya Bellard's communications from the dispatch center.

And they also couldn't communicate directly with anyone in North Hollywood. Any information had to be relayed to them by the SWAT dispatcher. They were approximately 18 miles from the shootout. The cars rushed onto the crowded L.A. freeway system with lights flashing and sirens blaring. Massa said many years later that it was almost as scary getting to the scene as it was facing the gunmen. The three officers were forced to use the narrow breakdown lane of the freeway. They barreled ahead at 90 miles per hour, and if one impatient idiot had pulled into the lane at the wrong moment because they didn't want to wait for traffic, that would have been the end of the SWAT officers.

Rick Massa's radio crackled to life. It was his sergeant with a situation report. Massa heard the words body armor, high-powered weapons, and Bank of America, and he knew instantly that these were the same suspects from the robberies the previous summer. A task force had spent two months trying to catch the men who had been nicknamed the high-incident bandits, but the robbers seemed to have disappeared. Now they were back. Massa's sergeant said numerous officers were down and their conditions were unknown. It sounded like the suspects were intent on shooting their way out, but SWAT's first job was to provide assistance to the wounded officers.

and SWAT should use whatever firepower was necessary to provide that assistance. Each SWAT officer's car was loaded with weapons and tactical gear. In Massa's trunk, there was an MP5 for close quarters combat, an assault rifle, multiple 45 caliber handguns, and a Benelli automatic shotgun. The level three body armor in the trunk wouldn't stop the high-powered rounds from Phillips and Mottisarano, but at least Massa could match their firepower. As Massa, Gomez, and Anderson blasted down the freeway, it might have been a blessing that they couldn't hear the constant calls for SWAT from the scene.

They were on their way, but they still couldn't fully comprehend the situation that awaited them. By design, SWAT existed to pacify situations that escalated beyond the resources of the typical patrol officer. SWAT served high-risk warrants, dealt with barrication, suspects, riot control, and hostage situations. In the 30 years since its creation, SWAT had never lost an officer in the line of duty. But in the 30 years since its creation, SWAT had never been in a gun battle like the one in North Hollywood. Dispatcher Twanya Bellard was worried about Officer Martin Whitfield. She was worried about every officer, but she knew Whitfield was badly injured. He had been one of the first officer shot, and he had been wounded four times.

Bellard knew that he was pinned down somewhere north of the intersection of Laurel Canyon and Archwood, and she knew the gunmen were moving in a northward direction. But she was especially worried about Martin Whitfield because he had stopped responding to radio calls. His voice had been growing more faint as he checked in, but now the dispatcher next to Bellard couldn't raise him. The dispatcher almost chanted his designation, 9L89, 9L89, come in. There was no response.

The dispatcher became more forceful. 9L89, 9L89, come in. Still, there was nothing. Martin Whitfield's girlfriend sat in their home listening to those same broadcasts on her police radio, the one that Martin had given her that morning before he left for work, and she was nearly out of her mind with panic.

Tanya Bellard then broadcast over the wrong, radio. The officer that's down at Archwood and Laurel Canyon appears to be unconscious. Officers nearby responded that the shooting was constant, and the vehicles at the intersection has sustained so much damage that they were inoperable. No one could get Officer Whitfield out. Roughly 200 meters away, south of the Valley Plaza Mall, two officers made the decision to go after Whitfield. Officers Anthony Kobanick and Todd Schmitz didn't know Whitfield's exact location. They only knew that he was somewhere near the intersection that had become the primary battle zone. That intersection was on the other side of the Valley Plaza Mall parking lot from where they now

stood. They were going to have to sneak through the entire length of the parking lot without getting shot to get to Archwood Street. Then they would have to find Whitfield and figure out a way to move him out of the hot zone, again without getting shot, and of course, without hurting Whitfield any further. There wasn't a whole lot of detail in the plan, but they were sick of listening to the agonizing radio calls and feeling helpless. They began their dashed through the parking lot, but they only made it a couple hundred feet when they stumbled into Officer Stuart Guy and Detective Tracy Angeles. Both were injured and in need of extraction. The rescuers raced back to their car, dove in side and drove it into the parking lot. They loaded Officer Guy into the back seat and Detective

Angelus laid down on the floorboards. Officer Schmitz threw the car into reverse and sped backwards south out of the parking lot. He and his partner drove the wounded officers to the command center about a half a mile away where medical help was waiting. Officer Guy's wounds were serious, but he was stabilized. He and Detective Angelus were transported to a nearby trauma center. The LAPD finally had its first win of the day, but there was still so much more work to do. Officer Whitfield was still unresponsive somewhere near the intersection of Laurel Canyon and Archwood. Sergeant Dean Haynes was also somewhere up there and also injured. Three civilians were still trapped in the intersection and hiding behind Haynes' car.

At least two of the three were wounded and one was bleeding badly. His blood was spreading over the pavement and was clearly visible from the news helicopter overhead. Officer Zaboravan and Detective Kruelak were still stranded in the dental office of Dr. Jorge Montez. Thankfully, they were out of the line of fire and safe, but both were injured and in need of help. Zaboravan in particular needed assistance as quickly as possible. They had watched the rescue of their partners from Dr. Montez's window, and that was a huge relief. but now they needed to organize their own rescue. That was going to be the next phase of the North Hollywood shootout.

The LAPD had absorbed a lot of punishment in the first few rounds of the fight, but the initial shock was gone. Now it was time to start fighting back. Next time on Infamous America, the LAPD gets creative to rescue the wounded. Members of the SWAT team arrive with better firepower, and the battle with the two gunmen becomes even more dangerous as it moves into the residential neighborhood around the bank. That's next week on Infamous America.

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Original music by Rob Valier. Copy editing by me, Chris Wimmer, and I'm your host and producer. Find us at our website, blackbarrelmedia.com, or on our social media channels. We're Black Barrel Media on Facebook and Instagram and B-Barrell Media on Twitter. And you can stream all our episodes on YouTube. Just search for Infamous America Podcast. This show is part of the Airwave Media Podcast Network. Please visit airwavemedia.com to check out other great podcasts.

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