February 28, 1997: Most Spectacular Hollywood Shoot Out Of ‘Em All!

A Brief History

On February 28, 1997, Hollywood was outdone by North Hollywood in a real life shootout worthy of the movies!

Digging Deeper

Digging deeper, we find the Los Angeles Police Department engaged in perhaps the biggest police versus robber shootout in American history!  To put it in perspective, about 2,000 rounds were fired of rifle, pistol, and shotgun ammunition!

The two bank robbers, Larry Phillips and Emil Matasareanu (from Romania) were not rookies at the robbery game.  They had robbed an armored car in 1993 and were arrested a couple months later when during a traffic stop police found 4 firearms, 2,800 rounds of ammunition, bullet proof vests, police scanners, smoke grenades and explosives!  For the various charges related to this stop they got only 100 days in jail. Apparently the justice system did not quite get the clue.

The delinquent duo went on to rob an armored car in 1995, killing a guard in the process.  Not content with that, they then robbed 2 Los Angeles banks in 1996 of a million and a half dollars. By this time police were aware they had very hard corps thugs on the loose, and the heavily armed pair was being hunted.

Apparently the large sums stolen the previous year were not enough, and the “High Incident Bandits” (as police called them) plotted another bank robbery.  Although the bandits thought they had carefully planned things (going so far as to study police response while listening to radio scanners and having watches attached to the back of their gloves to gauge how much time they thought the had) a variable in the equation would be their undoing!  Two patrol officers watched the robbers enter the bank and radioed for back up.

The robbers entered the bank heavily protected by body armor and armed to the teeth with 4 assault rifles modified (illegally) to fire on full automatic! Police initially responded with 9mm and .38 caliber pistols and shotguns, none of which would penetrate the body armor of the robbers. Putting 150 rounds into the ceiling to terrorize the people in the bank, the robbers took over $300,000 and left the bank through separate doorways.

The battle was on, with the robbers taking and surviving hits while firing away at police.  Eighteen officers and civilians were wounded by the bloodthirsty pair, though fortunately none died. The robbers fought together by their getaway car until Phillips was wounded and took off on foot, finally being reduced to using a 9mm pistol.  Wounded again, Phillips then shot himself in the head and died.  Matasareanu abandoned the demolished getaway car and tried to hijack a pick up truck, was unable to get it started, and was taken into custody with 20 gunshot wounds. Defiant to end, he died on the scene cursing the police while waiting for the ambulance.

With news helicopters filming much of the firefight, 300 police on the scene, and 20 casualties (counting the 2 dead robbers) this robbery gone bad was quite a sight!

An angle to the story is that the under gunned police actually had to run into a gun store and requisition assault rifles and ammo to compete with the bad guys!  Another angle is that most of the gun battle was on live television, including the deaths of the robbers!

Question for students (and subscribers): Have you ever been in a shootout?  Please let us know in the comments section below this article.

If you liked this article and would like to receive notification of new articles, please feel welcome to subscribe to History and Headlines by liking us on Facebook and becoming one of our patrons!

Your readership is much appreciated!

Historical Evidence

For more information, please see:

Caprarelli, John and Lee Mindham.  Uniform Decisions: My Life in the LAPD and the North Hollywood Shootout.  End of Watch, 2011.

History — Shootout North Hollywood Shootout.  A&E Television Networks, 2010.  DVD.

Simoneau, Yves, dir.  44 Minutes: The North Hollywood Shootout.  20th Century Fox, 2003.  DVD.