In a prior episode, we covered the Miami shootout. As with any engagement, lessons are learned that benefit professionals, concealed carry permit holders, and anyone using a firearm for defense. The North Hollywood Shootout is no exception, so let’s get to it.
[INTRO]
Hello, welcome, and thank you for dropping in. If you’re a regular listener, you’ll notice that we skipped posting an episode on schedule. There are several reasons for the skip, not the least of which was vacation.
I managed to cram a year's worth of windshield time into a couple of weeks. It started with a two-day trek to Wichita, Kansas, where we spent two days visiting family before a two-day drive back. After a couple of days rest, it was a one-day drive to Illinois with a return trip the next day with the grandkids. Add in some running around to take them to various fun things, then we made a run to Kentucky to return them to their parents.
Throw into the mix of everything our acquisition of a now five-month-old German Shepherd puppy, who you may hear in the background gnawing on a rawhide chew, and we’ve been busier than Merrick Garland covering up the Biden family crimes. But we’re back now, and ready to share some valuable lessons learned.
The North Hollywood Shootout was very similar to the Miami Shootout. Both involved bank robbers versus law enforcement, with the robbers holding a significant advantage of overwhelming firepower. Fortunately, in this case, only the bad guys lost their lives.
At the time of the incident, LAPD patrol officers were armed with Beretta 92FS 9mm pistols and Ithaca Model 37 12 gauge shotguns. The bad guys they were up against had the following:
- A Bushmaster XM-15 converted illegally to fire full auto with two 100-round Beta Magazines
- A Heckler & Koch HK-91 semi-automatic rifle with several 30-round magazines
- A Beretta 92FS with several magazines
- Three Norinco AK47 rifles converted illegally to fire full auto with several 75- to 100-round drum magazines, as well as 30-round box magazines.
So how did this disparate conglomeration of weaponry meet and how did it turn out? Two armed men entered a Bank of America in Los Angeles and announced a robbery. When they left the building, they were immediately surrounded by police. Instead of surrendering, however, the robbers started firing their weapons — and the bloody North Hollywood shootout began.
The two robbers, Larry Phillips Jr., 26, and Emil Matasareanu, 30, were known to L.A. police as the “High Incident Bandits” for their frequent thefts and robberies in which they used a combination of weapons from their cache. During their first robbery in 1995 they shot and killed a guard while robbing a Brinks truck. Another botched armored car robbery and two successful bank robberies later, at 9:15 AM they entered the Bank of America on February 28th, 1997, not knowing they would be starting the longest, most intense gunfight in American history. Riding a phenobarbital high, they were armed with Norinco AK47 rifles and Phillips had a Beretta 92FS pistol. They both wore type 3-rated ballistic vests and had used parts of vests to fashion arm and leg guards. In addition, Phillips wore a load-bearing vest with pouches stuffed with magazines, and Matasareanu had supplemented his vest with a steel plate.
Victims of their own success, the robbers were disappointed that the bank only had $300,000 in the vault. Due to the pair's success in robbing other banks, area banks had been advised to hold less cash than normal in their vaults. Expecting there to be $750,000 in the vault, Matasareanu became enraged and emptied the magazine of his Kalashnikov into the vault. He then attempted to get into the ATM, but was unable to do so. After locking the customers and staff in the vault, Matasareanu exited the bank by the south exit while Phillips used the north one.
What they didn’t know was that as they exited their car, a white Chevy Celebrity, and headed towards the bank they were spotted by LAPD Officers Loren Farrell and Martin Perello, who radioed in a possible robbery in progress. While Phillips and Matasareanu were in the bank, multiple patrol and detective units had converged on the bank, surrounding it with forty-four officers and an air unit. Officers outside heard the initial burst fired by Matasareanu, and his subsequent emptying of a seventy-five-round magazine into the vault, both of which gave away the presence of at least one fully automatic weapon.
26-year-old James Zboravan and his partner positioned themselves near a small locksmith kiosk on the east corner of the block opposite the bank. Being directly across from the bank entrance, he would have a direct line of sight when the suspects emerged. Zboravan was a firearms enthusiast and, rightfully, decided to use his department-issued pump shotgun with nine-pellet 00 buckshot rather than his Beretta 92FS pistol.
As Phillips emerged from the north door of the bank he peeked around the door’s alcove and saw a number of officers waiting for him. He fired his Norinco Type 56 at the police. Officer Zboravan returned fire with the shotgun.
“I shot at him with 00 buck, and it absorbed into his body armor,” Zboravan stated. “If I had a slug, it may not have penetrated the armor, but it would have broken his shoulder or maybe his back and he would have been down in the street, in pain or unconscious.”
The buckshot rounds did get his attention, and Phillips began to spray rounds at officers positioned across the street. The rounds went right through the police cruisers. Zboravan was hit in his left buttock and lower back. Meanwhile, Matasareanu exited from the bank’s south door, firing in every direction. He re-entered and exited the bank three times to shoot at the police. Phillips also took cover inside the building. Phillips re-emerged seconds later for another round with the LAPD. He riddled the police with a hail of gunfire, tearing apart squad cars and wounding four more officers before disappearing back inside. At 9:28, Phillips and Matasareanu, with the nylon bag of money, left the bank. They laid down heavy, continuous covering fire as they began to make their way toward the sidewalk.
At 9:33 AM the air unit helpfully let the officers on the ground know that the robbers were wearing body armor. This was something the officers were painfully aware of already, as they had hit the robbers multiple times with their handgun rounds with no apparent effect whatsoever.
At one point a police lieutenant ordered some of his officers to go into a gun shop and obtain effective weapons. The officers complied, but before the officers had the opportunity to employ them a SWAT team had arrived.
At 9:53, Phillips’ rifle jammed. The LAPD’s after-action report later noted that a 7.62×39 case stove-piped in the ejection port. He discarded it and drew a 9mm pistol to keep firing at the police. Shot in the hand, he dropped the weapon and bent down to pick it up. Instead of continuing to fight the LAPD, he put the barrel to his chin and shot himself in the head. He fell to the ground, dead.
Meanwhile, Matasareanu had tried to hijack a bystander’s Jeep to escape. Thinking quickly, the Jeep’s owner took the keys with him as he abandoned the vehicle, leaving Matasareanu stranded. The robber instead took cover behind the Jeep and kept firing at the officers that surrounded him.
The police crouched down and started shooting at Matasareanu’s unarmored legs beneath the vehicle. They hit him a total of 29 times, and he eventually tried to surrender. By that point, however, Emil Matasareanu had lost too much blood. He died in handcuffs on the asphalt. The North Hollywood Shootout was finally over. Twelve police officers and eight civilians were injured and the two suspects died in the shootout.
There are several in-depth accounts of the shootout online. I encourage you to read them to get the full impact. For now, let’s take what is presented here and glean what knowledge we can. If you use a defensive firearm in any capacity, there’s quite a bit here to put in your mental notebook.
First, and most importantly, if you’re in a fight, you’re in it as long as you’re drawing breath and have the means to resist. Surrender means death. I’ve seen people live with truly horrific injuries, and I’ve seen people die from the most minor ones. If you’re wounded, stay in the fight until help arrives or the good Lord calls you home. Officer Zboravan said, “There was no time to be scared. It’s not a macho thing. There’s so much going on. You fall back on your training. The lesson is, very plainly: Just because you’re shot doesn’t mean you’re going to die. You must fight on.”
Prepare yourself to be the victor, and come out of the fight with a truly kick-ass story for your grandkids.
Next, I’ve said it before and I will keep saying it, train for malfunctions. While none of the good guys experienced any sort of weapon malfunction, they very well could have. Bad guy Phillips was taken out of the fight, and, subsequently the gene pool by a smokestack jam in his rifle. This is something that, with training, is easily cleared. Phillips’ inability to clear a simple malfunction let him take first place in the shootout’s room temperature challenge. Don’t let this happen to you.
You should give malfunction drills a few minutes in every range session. Have your range partner load a dummy round or two randomly in your magazines (empty brass also works, but not as well as dummies) so you can learn to recognize and quickly clear stoppages. If you don’t have a range partner, randomly load a few yourself the night before and make malfunction drills the first part of your training session. However you do it, practice until you can get the gun back in action through muscle memory while you stay threat-focused.
On the subject of training, train with your vehicle. Know the difference between cover and concealment, and determine what parts of your car provide what. Remember, concealment hides you, cover stops bullets. You would be surprised how much of a modern vehicle bullets will penetrate and pass through like a hot knife through butter.
Determine what parts of your vehicle give cover, and figure out what contortions you’ll have to perform to shoot from them. Practice shooting from these positions at the range using range props, barrels, or, your actual car. Matasareanu was taken down because, while the vehicles he was using for cover were effective, his feet and legs were vulnerable.
Let me take a quick minute to tell you where your next AR platform rifle needs to come from.
[Fort Mill Firearms Commercial]
Which lets us segue nicely to our next point, which is “shoot what you can until you can shoot what you want.” Both the bad guys in this caper were wearing body armor. The responding officers, defaulting to their training, were shooting the bad guys center mass. Which meant they were shooting them in the body armor. Now, I know a lot of you are saying “If that were me, I’d just do a failure drill. Two to the body, one to the head and it would be over.” And at this point I’d call you out as a total Chad, knowing you’ve never been in a real gunfight. Because, while a Mozambique is technically correct, hitting something the size of a head in an adrenalin-fueled gunfight with the target shooting back at you isn’t as easy as your nightly games of Call of Duty while sitting on your mom’s basement couch make it seem.
Sure, getting hit while wearing body armor hurts, but it’s not an incapacitating hurt. If you know or suspect your opponent is wearing armor, shoot at what isn’t armored. Hips and legs are great targets. Even with some armor protection like these two criminals had on their legs, hit to the legs or hips would have brought them down, at the very least ending their mobility. If they remained a threat, well, it’s easier to hit a head laying on the ground than one upright and bobbing and weaving.
And don’t leave just yet Chad. I’m not quite done bagging on you. Another thing your tier one basement video game experience hasn’t taught you is that it’s harder than it looks to deliver accurate, aimed fire when the target is shooting back. Especially in this case. All the rifles these two robbers had were converted to fully automatic. That means they were able to employ what is known as suppressive fire. That’s where you don’t particularly care if you’re accurate or not, as long as you sending a sufficient amount of rounds downrange to keep your enemy from popping up and getting a well-aimed shot off. Go ahead and give Activision a call and tell them to add this to their game settings. You’re dismissed Chad.
My final point is for you defensive shotgun officianados out there. Remember Officer Zboravan relating hitting Phillips with a round of double-ought buckshot, and thinking that if he had a slug it may have made a difference? While a slug may not penetrate body armor, it will impact with significantly more force than a nine-millimeter round. A slug will give you this extra punch, as well as the capability to reach out beyond buckshot range if necessary. Carry a couple slugs in your sidesaddle, along with your buckshot reloads. This is my go-to home defense solution. Given the choice, I’ll always take a long gun when given the choice. As Clint Smith famously said, "The only purpose for a pistol is to fight your way back to the rifle you should've never laid down."
That’s it for this episode. Again, thanks for dropping in and listening. If you liked what you heard here, consider telling a like-minded friend about us.
We’re doing a South Carolina Concealed Carry Permit class Saturday, August 19th, and, back by popular demand, our first-of-the-year Ladies Only Basic Handgun Clinic Saturday and Sunday, August 26th and 27th. I’ll put links to them in the show notes, or you can look them up on our website tacticalpirate.com.
Until next time, shoot safe.
