Infamous America - NORTH HOLLYWOOD ROBBERY Ep. 5 | “A New Danger”

Episode Date: May 4, 2022

The shootout moves into a residential neighborhood, and the LAPD organizes the rescue of injured officers and civilians. One of the robbers makes his final stand, and the other struggles to continue his escape. Check out the Jordan Harbinger show today! jordanharbinger.com/start Join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join To advertise on this podcast, please email: [e-mail] For more details, please visit www.blackbarrelmedia.com. Our social media pages are: @blackbarrelmedia on Facebook and Instagram, and @bbarrelmedia on Twitter. This show is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please visit AirwaveMedia.com to check out other great podcasts like The Explorers, History of the Great War, and many more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Los Angeles Police Department had been engaged in a gun battle for more than 20 minutes on the morning of February 28, 1997 on the streets of North Hollywood, and they had been losing badly. As far as anyone could tell, the injury count was now at 12 officers and at least two civilians. The two men who had robbed the Bank of America on Laurel Canyon Boulevard and started the gunfight also seemed to be injured, though the severity of the injuries was impossible to know. An officer had seen the smaller of the two robbers, Larry Phillips, double over after the officer had fired a shotgun round from long distance. The shotgun was well out of its effective range, but it seemed like some of the buckshot struck Phillips. If it did, it certainly didn't stop

Phillips. It didn't even slow him down. He was wearing body armor from his neck to his ankles, so there was no guarantee that the pellets did any damage at all. The bigger of the two, the two robbers, Emil Matasiranu, had been limping badly as the two men began their escape. He had clearly been shot in the leg, but he was still mobile. They had started the robbery at 9-17 that morning, collected about $300,000 in a duffel bag, and then sustained a shootout with police officers outside the bank when calls came in about a robbery in progress. The LAPD's handguns and shotguns were no match for the fully automatic, high-per-per-personed.

Howard assault rifles of the robbers. The two gunmen had shredded everything in their path, cars, buildings, and people, but mercifully, as yet, no one was dead. The gunmen had left the front of the bank and moved into the parking lot where their getaway car waited. A security die pack inside their duffel bag full of cash exploded and rendered the money useless. So now, Emil Matasaranu slowly drove their 1985 Chevy Celebrity Getaway car toward the exit of the parking lot. Larry Phillips stayed on foot outside the car and continued to pour rifle fire at officers who were pinned down in the area. The robbers weren't going to be able to leave with their money, but it seemed like there was a very real possibility they would escape. They had thoroughly dominated the situation up to that point.

That was starting to change. Two officers had rescued wounded colleagues from the Valley Plaza Mall parking lot across the street from the bank. The first members of the SWAT team were moments away from arriving, and the LAPD would devise a brilliantly simple plan to reach the injured civilians who were trapped in the line of fire. The next 20 minutes of the North Hollywood shootout was going to look much different from the first 20 minutes. From BlackBarrel Media, this is Infamous America. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer, and this season we're, telling the story of the North Hollywood robbery in the unprecedented battle between two gunmen

and the Los Angeles Police Department. This is episode five, a new danger. Officer Martin Whitfield was one of the first patrolmen to arrive at the bank robbery in progress. He was also one of the first to be hit by the initial volley of automatic gunfire from Larry Phillips' Noreenco type 56 assault rifle. Phillips rounds had torn right through Whitfield's police car and struck the officer or twice. Then a few moments later, as he tried to dash across the intersection of Laurel Canyon Boulevard and Archwood Street, he was shot again. This time the bullet shattered the bone in his upper leg. Whitfield crashed to the ground on a patch of grass behind a skinny tree that sure as hell wasn't thick enough to protect him. Phillips continued to fire in Whitfield's direction,

but Whitfield hadn't sustained any more injuries. The ones he had were life-threatening. As he was trained, he constantly updated the dispatchers on his position and status, but each update was a little more faint than the one before it. The gunfire at his location was too intense for help to reach him. Dispatchers could only say, 9L89, hang in there, and Whitfield could only respond with 9L89, thank you. But over the last few moments, Martin Whitfield's situation had become critical. He stopped responding, and dispatchers feared he was unconscious. As the two gunmen started to make their escape, officers desperately needed to find a way to get to Whitfield and the other wounded in the intersection. In the north parking lot of Bank of America, Emil Matasarano slowly drove their white Chevy celebrity getaway car toward the exit.

Larry Phillips was on foot nearby, continuing to fire in multiple directions with his HK-91-1-1-1-8-1-1. a3 semi-automatic assault rifle. By that point, it was abundantly clear to everyone, from the cops on the ground to the news reporter in the chopper overhead, that the gunmen were wearing body armor. Officers who returned fire tried to aim for the heads of the gunmen, but thus far, they hadn't had any luck. Then an officer managed a shot that was the next best thing. He hit Phillips rifle near the spot where Phillips' left hand supported the barrel. The shot injured Phillips hand and damaged his weapon. Phillips could no longer support the rifle with his left hand,

so he rested it on his left forearm and continued firing. But then, as he walked out from behind an SUV, he was hit again in the left arm. The arm dropped helplessly to his side. He fired a few more rounds, and then the rifle jammed. The trunk of the getaway car was open, and Phillips walked around to it and tossed the weapon inside. He pulled out a third Noreenko type 56 rifle that was the Chinese version of the recognizable AK-47. Phillips and Mada Seranu had walked into the bank about 30 minutes earlier carrying identical Noreencos that had been illegally modified from semi-auto to full auto.

Phillips' backup Noreenko was also illegally modified, and now he brought back the roar of automatic rifle fire. He fired from the back of the car. and then he stepped toward the front passenger side door. Inside, Matasarano reached across the seat and pushed the door open. It swung open in front of Phillips as if Matasarano was urging his partner to get in so they could leave. But Phillips slammed the door shut with his injured arm. He chose to stay outside and stay engaged in the gunfight. Matasarano started driving toward the exit,

and Phillips walked alongside the car and fired downrange toward the police car. in the intersection of Laurel Canyon and Archwood. Whatever the escape plan had been, this clearly wasn't it. Matasarano drove the car right up to the edge of the exit and then stopped. Phillips was several yards behind the car, and then he quickly moved up next to it and again refused to get in. Instead, he walked out of the parking lot and onto the sidewalk of Archwood Street and continued blasting away at the police.

Matasarano, who probably didn't know what his partner was planning because there was no plan, had no choice but to turn right onto Archwood and follow Larry Phillips with the car. By the time SWAT officers Rick Mesa, Steve Gomez, and Don Anderson, made it through the first freeway and switched on to the second, the one that would take them to North Hollywood, they had the road to themselves. The command center had shut down the highway so that moving resources in and out would be faster. For the last two and a half miles of their trip to North Hollywood, the three officers were pushing 120 miles per hour. As soon as they exited the freeway at Victory Boulevard, they could see the news choppers.

Several more had joined the original K-Kow-9 news helicopter. All the streets were shut down, and rows of fire trucks, ambulances, and police cars lined the curbs. Also present was the LAPD's Cadillac Gage Commando V-115. armored vehicle. It was an eight-ton monster that looked like a tank with four wheels instead of two tracks. SWAT used it to deal with barricaded suspect situations, something the shootout could very well devolve into. Instead of a turret with a cannon, the V-150 was equipped with a battering ram. The flat head of the battering ram had a smiley face painted on it, along with the words,

have a nice day. Rick Mesa and his fellow SWAT members were a well-well. welcome site. No doubt there was some sense of relief when dispatcher Twanya Bellard sent word of their arrival over the radio. At the makeshift command center in a furniture shop three blocks from the bank, the incident commander told Massa, Gomez, and Anderson that the priority was getting to the injured civilians and the officers. He briefed them on the locations. The LAPD had the V-150 armored vehicle, which was much more resistant to powerful bullets, but it wasn't a personnel carrier. It wasn't designed to hold lots of people, so the cops couldn't use it to ferry the wounded

out of the area. Fortunately, they came up with a different, more creative plan. An armored car that was on its way to deliver cash to a nearby bank had been stopped by the traffic closures, and the LAPD decided to commandeer it to rescue the injured. The truck was owned by a company called Armored Transport, and the two men who were supposed to make the simple delivery volunteered to drive it into the hot zone. The SWAT officers geared up. The urgency was so great that Steve Gomez didn't bother with his tactical utility clothing. He wore a t-shirt, shorts, and running shoes. He threw on a helmet and his bulletproof vest and grabbed his belt in his gun. He looked like exactly what he was, a guy who was ready to go for a jog, and

then detoured into a gunfight. Several officers loaded into the armored truck and the three SWAT officers piled into a car to follow the truck. At that time, the robbers were exiting the parking lot and moving into the residential neighborhood along Archwood. They were moving away from the intersection where they'd done so much damage, but Phillips still fired back in that direction and was still a danger to cops and civilians. As the area of operation, shifted, it meant new dangers for the people on Archwood, but it also relieved some of the pressure on one of the two original hotspots. The gunmen were moving away from the bank, which meant they were also moving away from the Valley Plaza Mall. In the dental office of Dr. Jorge Montez

on the second floor of the mall, Montez, his wife, and their resistance had stabilized the gunshot wounds to Officer James Zaborvan as best they could. The rookie officer was staying tough. The rookie officer was staying tough, but he needed to get to an emergency room. Detective John Kruelak stood outside the office door at the top of the stairs that led down to the parking lot. He had a piece of shrapnel buried in his ankle, but he kept his pump-action shotgun aimed at the door at the bottom of the stairs. If the robbers came through that door, they would have an unpleasant welcome. While he kept his watch, he used his radio to relay the phone number of the dentist's office to the command center.

Command called the office, and Kruelak coordinated a rescue mission for Zaboravan. Dr. Montez confirmed that there was a back entrance to the building. Officers could approach from the alley behind the mall and be completely protected from the shooting. It didn't take long for a car to arrive. Dr. Montez ran down the back stairs and met officers Anthony Kaubanick and Todd Schmitz. They were the same officers who had rescued the partners of Kruelak and Zaboravan from the front of the parking lot when it was still a hot zone. Now, they helped load Kruelak and Zaborvan into the car,

and they sped back to the command center. Dr. Jorge Montez and his staff had answered the call when needed, and now four injured officers were safely out of danger in receiving medical care. The next priority was Officer Martin Whitfield. The SWAT officers and the commandeered armored car now had a pretty solid location for Whitfield, but they also heard he might be losing consciousness. Dispatcher Twanya Bellard advised them to pick up Whitfield and go north on Laurel Canyon Boulevard to fire station number 89. It was about a half a mile away and there would be a chopper waiting to rush him to a hospital.

The rescue team moved out. By that point, Matasaranu was guiding his bullet-rilled car down Archwood Street. It was remarkable the car could still run. Two tires were shot out. The hood was strafed with bullets and it was leaking fuel. But as it limped along, Larry Phillips was on foot nearby and continued to engage the police with this fully automatic rifle. As the two-vehicle rescue convoy approached the intersection, the SWAT officers couldn't believe the wreckage.

The black and white police cars of Officer Martin Whitfield and Sergeant Dean Haynes were all but destroyed. With that kind of damage, there was a real fear that the rescue team might be dealing with fatalities instead of injuries. The armored car

swerved between the destroyed police cars and crossed Archwood Street. The SWAT officers could see other officers concentrating their attention east down the street. The action was moving in that direction as the robbers made a slow, haphazard escape attempt.

But SWAT and the armored car were there for Whitfield. They found him on the grass behind a thin tree lying in a pool of his own blood. He had been fading for quite a while, and he might have lost consciousness at one point, but he became more alert

when he saw the convoy. The officers in the armored car threw open the rear doors and jumped out to get Whitfield. The SWAT officers leapt out of their car and trained their weapons down Archwood Street and back at the bank. When Whitfield was lifted,

into the vehicle, it was clear to everyone, including Martin Whitfield, how bad his injury was. A gunshot had shattered his femur, the bone in the top half of his leg. The leg flopped around like it could fall off at any time. But for the first time since he started exchanging gunfire with Larry Phillips, Whitfield was safe. Whitfield heard someone radio the news to dispatch. Then he heard the familiar voice of Twania Bellard, as she repeated the information, fall. far and wide, and Whitfield desperately hoped that his girlfriend Kim was listening to the police radio he'd given her that morning. As the officers in the armored car were loading Whitfield, they realized they could see three trapped civilians by Sergeant Dean Haynes' car. They could also

see a significant puddle of blood in the street. Gunfire could still be heard, but it was moving away from them down Archwood Street. The driver and the team maneuvered the armored car over to the victims and began loading them. The three SWAT officers covered the operation, and Barry Golding, Tracy Fisher, and Michael Horan were finally out of harm's way. The civilians had spent the better part of an hour crouched on the hot asphalt in the middle of one of the worst gunfights American law enforcement had ever seen. A bullet had skipped under a police car and struck Tracy Fisher in the ankle. Michael Horan had been shot in the chest and the arm. The puddle of blood that was spotted by the officers in the armored car was from Iran,

and the TV viewers had been watching him bleed for more than 10 minutes. But with the evacuation of Whitfield and the civilians, the most dire casualties were finally off the street and on their way to the hospital. Now it was time to end the gunfight. The three SWAT officers looked down Archwood Street and saw officers waving at them to move in that direction. Massa, Gomez, and Anderson didn't know what had happened down there or what might still be happening, but the gunfire had not stopped. There was more work to do. The gunfight had moved onto a usually quiet street of two-and-three-bedroom homes,

where yards had swing sets and neighbors looked forward to barbecues on the weekends. Larry Phillips was on the sidewalk along Archwood Street, and Emil Matasarano drove the white Chevy down the middle of the road near him. Officers originally engaged Phillips and Matasaranu from units that were posted at the bank's exit onto Archwood, but Phillips was using a fully automatic assault rifle with a drum magazine that could hold as many as 100 rounds. The officers, with their 9mm handguns, had no choice but to pull back. They backed off, but they stayed engaged. They fired from three directions, and TV viewers at home could see little puffs of dust,

kick up around Phillips when bullets hit the dirt. As Phillips continued down Archwood, he looked disoriented. He fired in all directions, and then he suffered a weapon malfunction or a gunshot wound, or possibly both. There was an old tractor trailer, a semi-truck, parked along the side of the street. That was rare in residential neighborhoods, but it provided good cover for Phillips as he fumbled with his rifle. He squatted down behind the back bumper and tried to figure out the problem. Matasarano stopped the car near Phillips. They exchanged words, and then Matasurano accelerated down Archwood.

He swerved and hit the curb, and then bounced back into the street and accelerated again before slowing down as he crossed Agnes Avenue. There were officers stationed at the end of the road to block traffic and escape attempts. If Larry Phillips continued on his current course, he would walk into more direct fire. Back behind the truck, Phillips did exactly that. He rose to his feet, stepped out, and continued his walk while firing his weapon. To viewers watching the feeds from the TV news helicopters, he disappeared behind the truck. It was at that time that Philip's weapons suffered what was known as a stovepipe jam.

One of the casings didn't fully eject from the weapon after its round had been fired. It prevented the next round from loading. Phillips either didn't know how to clear the jam or couldn't clear it because his left arm was too badly injured. He threw the rifle down and pulled his Beretta 92FS handgun. Whether he knew it or not, it was his last stand. And if Mada Seranu recognized it, he wasn't sticking around. He continued to drive down Archwood away from his partner. Behind Mada Seranu, a maroon car drove into the intersection of Agnes and Archwood. It stopped, led out two officers,

and then followed Montserrano's badly damaged Chevy, even though the standing order was to fall back. The command center broadcast a message. At this point, the ballgame is with SWAT. If the suspects move, make sure the air unit monitors them so SWAT can take them down. There are no officers that should try and stop these suspects.

Dispatcher Twanya Bellard relayed the message to all LAPD units, but the situation was progressing too quickly. Two officers had jumped out of a car less than a block from Larry Phillips, and the three members of the SWAT team were still several blocks away near the spot where Officer Whitfield and the civilians had been loaded into the armored car. And the radio in the SWAT team's car didn't carry Twanya Bellard's frequency. It only had access to SWAT's frequency. Any messages that were intended for the SWAT team had to be relayed to the SWAT dispatcher and then passed on to the men at the scene. So at that specific moment, the three SWAT officers, Massa, Gomez, and Anderson,

didn't know that they were supposed to take the lead in bringing down the gunmen. From their location, they could see officers down the street waving at them, but the SWAT team thought the officers were signaling that they were more wounded who needed to be evacuated. There was still gunfire coming from that direction, but there was a distinct change in the volume and tenacity. The thunder of a fully automatic assault rifle was done. It was replaced by the pops of 38 caliber revolvers and 9mm handguns. And very shortly, those would stop too. The TV audience, who had an overhead view of the events from the news helicopters, was about to watch the first half of the end of the North Hollywood shootout. Larry Phillips had did.

his assault rifle and switched to his handgun. He fired at officers and then ducked out of sight behind the parked tractor trailer. He disappeared for more than 30 seconds, but that was just a pause in the action. When he appeared again, he fired at the officers who had jumped out of a maroon car in an intersection right in front of him. He marched straight at them as they returned fire. Then Phillips reacted as though he'd been shot in the hand. He dropped his gun, and as he crouched down to pick it up, he struggled with the weapon. It's very possible that the gun was damaged, and if Phillips' right hand was injured at the same time, it meant he was now wounded in both hands. Either way, he was done firing at the police. Two things happened almost simultaneously.

As Larry Phillips struggled with his gun, it went off in his hands. And he was shot in the back of the neck by an officer. Phillips' gun was pointed up at his chin, so he suffered two fatal gunshot wounds at nearly the same time. Phillips' legs buckled, and he tumbled forward. He crumpled to the ground and lay in a fetal position. For a few more seconds, bullets continued to skip off the dirt around him

as officers couldn't be sure what had just happened. Then, they held their fire and watched for movement. When Phillips remained still, officers cautiously moved in and surrounded him. They pulled off his mask and checked his vitals. He was dead, but his identity was a mystery. He was responsible for nearly every victim in the North Hollywood shootout, but for the first time in nearly 40 minutes, there was no gunfire. There was confusion and shouting, but there was finally a moment with no shooting.

Unfortunately, it wouldn't last. One of the high-incident bandits was down, but the other was still active. Next time on Infamous America, with Larry Phillips down, the LAPD focuses on Emil Matasaranu. SWAT officers race into action for the final showdown of the North Hollywood shootout, which, of course, plays out live on TV. That's next week on the season finale here on Infamous America. Members of our Black Barrel Plus program don't have to wait week to week for new episodes. They received the entire season to binge all at once with no commercials, and they also receive exclusive bonus episodes.

Sign up now through the link in the show notes or on our website, blackbarrelmedia.com. Memberships begin at just $5 per month. This season was researched and written by Jamie Lyko, 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 channel. for 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 like Ben Franklin's World, History of the Great War, and many more. Thanks for listening.