Background/Article on the Shootout
Note: This is an article I wrote for a website. It describes in detail the North Hollywood Shootout and its events.
On February 28th, 1997, two men, Larry Eugene Phillips Jr., and Emil Dechebal Matasareanu, entered a Bank of America on Laurel Canyon Boulevard, in North Hollywood, LA, California. They immediately told the customers and employees to get on the floor. Wielding AK-47 assault rifles, and dressed from head to toe in black clothing, they meant business. Both also wore level III kevlar body armor vests; Phillips had even cut up several more vests to make arm and leg guards. The two men even wore sunglasses under their masks and had sewn stopwatches into their gloves.
Phillips and Matasareanu were highly experienced; they had robbed three armored cars and two banks before the North Hollywood one. Their eventual take was $1.7 million dollars.
Anyway Matasareanu walks up to the plexiglass “bandit barrier” and blasts it with automatic fire. The steel-core rounds the men used easily shattered the bulletproof glass, allowing Matasareanu to walk up right into the vault and fill a suitcase with over $338,000 in cash.
While Matasareanu is in the vault, Phillips decides to take a look outside. He lumbers over to the glass doors--remember, this guy is wearing 43 pounds of body armor--and peers outside. Surprise!! An army of police officers is waiting right outside for them.
Eight minutes later, Phillips and Matasareanu come out of the bank. What do they do? They raise their guns, 100 round drums attached, and open fire on the LAPD officers wating for them.
As Matasareanu cranks off rounds, the suitcase begins to smoke. When he opens it up...another suprise!! They have picked up three dye packs that have stained the $338,000 hot pink. Hot pink, of all colors. Matasareanu drops the suitcase and gets into a white Chevy idling by the front door. Phillips, on the other hand, ignores the hundreds of 9mm rounds flying at--and into--him. He walks around next to the bank, firing calmly and getting more magazines from Matasareanu as he does.
At one point Phillips retrieves an HK-91 from the trunk of his car. He continues to fire at police, then suddenly, as bullets are flying around and into him, on live nationally broadcasted television--did I mention that there were at least six news helicopters videotaping them from the moment they came out?--Phillips turns his gun skyward and empties an entire magazine right at the helicopter that is videotaping him. You can actually see the rounds fly past the camera.
Finally Matasareanu pulls out in the Chevy and yells for Phillips to get in the car. Phillips goes to the car....but as he does, a police bullet tears into his chest, just above his body armor. Phillips doesn’t die though--although he is bleeding from an artery and he has temporarily lost the use of most of his left side, he continues to fire one-handed, then goes to the car. He then leans in and tells Matasareanu that he has been hit. Phillips tells him to drive while he covers, then goes back to the trunk and retrieves another AK-47. He seems to have some trouble loading it; he only uses one hand, once again.
Phillips walks beside the car, firing, until they reach the street. Then he walks calmly away from the car, Matasareanu still driving. I think he knew he was done for; that’s why he stayed behind. Anyway his AK jams--a “stovepipe jam”, which is the origin of my user name--and he drops it.
Phillips then pulls out a 9mm Beretta 92F handgun and walks down the sidewalk, still shooting. A police bullet knocks the gun from his hand, and he bends down to pick it up. As he picks it back up, he realizes that it is empty.
Phillips tries to reload the weapon one-handed; I believe he tried to use the collar of his body armor to cock it. But we will never know. As he does this, a sniper’s bullet hits him in the back of the neck, severing his spine. This in turn causes his hand to spasm, which in turn causes the gun to go off, blowing his brains out at the exact same time as another police bullet blew out the back of his throat.
The two men had no other friends besides each other. Larry and Emil were almost fanatically loyal to each other, which is why Phillips stayed behind to buy Emil time to escape.
Larry Eugene Phillips, Jr., age 26, sacrificed himself to save his only friend in the world.
As Phillips lays there, dead, there is one final dishonor for him.
The police shot his dead body several times. They actually shot him, on camera, after he was dead, then walked up to his corpse and shot him again, knowing he was already dead. This is in one of the clips available on my website.
Matasareanu, meanwhile, commandeers a pickup truck. As he gets in, he realizes that the keys are missing, and he barrels back out of it, and behind his own car just as a SWAT unit pulls up just ten meters away from him, on the other side of the pickup. Matasareanu opens fire with an M-16 rifle, and a two-minute gun battle ensues.
Finally Emil Matasareanu throws his hands up after being shot nearly 20 times in the legs. However, SWAT continued to shoot him after he surrendered, resulting in nine more bullet wounds.
As SWAT handcuffs Emil, he calls his arresting officer a few rude names and shouts at the police to “shoot me in the *beep* head!” For this he recieves a few swift kicks in the stomach, and then a SWAT officer walks up and stomps repeatedly on Matasareanu’s head, while another officer stamps down on his now useless legs.
Matasareanu might actually have survived, had it not been for officer John Futrell, the pigger assigned to guard Emil. Futrell actually ordered ambulances away, and a few minutes later was reported to have ordered a pizza as Emil bled on the sidewalk.
An hour later, Matasareanu was scraped off the sidewalk when his pleas for help finally went silent. He was pronounced dead at the scene.