North Hollywood Shootout

6/17/03 | Scooter 2

[scooter2]

I need some FReeper help with some research on the North Hollywood Shooutout (Bank Robbery). Does anyone know just where the perptrators obtainrd full auto AK47's. They surely didn't get them at a local sporting goods store.

[scooter2]

Yes, I know this is a vanity post, but I can't find the needed info.

[cavtrooper21]

If I remember correctly, they were modified using handmade parts.

[Conspiracy Guy]

I think they were converted SKS's. At any rate a little marksmanship on behalf of PD would have shortened the whole ordeal.

[eXe]

All I could find was this..

http://www.vpc.org/studies/wgun970228.htm

Where'd They Get Their Guns?
An Analysis of the Firearms Used in High-Profile Shootings, 1963 to 2001
Date: February 28, 1997

Location: North Hollywood, California

Alleged Shooters: Emil Dechebal Matasareanu and Larry Eugene Phillips, Jr.

People Killed: Two (shooters killed by police)

People Injured: 16

Firearm(s): Multiple fully automatic assault rifles including an AK-47 type


Circumstances

On February 28, 1997, Matasareanu and Phillips tried to rob a Bank of America branch office in North Hollywood, California. While trying to escape, the two men engaged in a shootout with police. Though vastly outnumbered, the two men—armed with automatic weapons and wearing body armor—successfully held off law enforcement personnel for hours before being shot and killed by police.


How Firearm(s) Acquired

The weapons were originally bought at a gun show and then illegally resold to Matasareanu and Phillips.



I will keep looking on how they got them to auto. No info on that here. Don't know how reliable the site I got this info from was..

[Puppage]

They may have HAD an SKS, but if I recall correctly, most of the shooting was done with H&K 93A's.

Also, weren't all these guns smuggled in from Mexico? I seem to remember a Mexican connection......

[GOP_1900AD]

A couple of months ago I recall the find of a fairly significant cache nearby, I think in Chatsworth or Van Nuys. My guesses as to source - NORINCO / PLA, Red Mafiya or Mexican Drug Cartels.

[FNG]

That stupid movie said an "AK" was confiscated from them at a traffic stop and then ordered to be given back to pay court costs. I have to assume this was before an illegal full auto conversion was performed on the gun.

[Puppage]

..... how they got them to auto

I'm sure it started by shaving the sheer pin, among other steps.

[Ronaldus Magnus]

There are different opinions about this. I believe that they were part of the first "Chinese DNC Donor" shipment of full-auto, short barreled AKS's. The shipment that wasn't intercepted by U.S. Customs. There also is still some debate over whether or not they jammed as first reported or merely ran out of ammo.

Full discussion:

Rec.Guns: LA Shootout-What Guns?

Rec.Guns: LA Shootout-What Guns?(2)

[coloradan]

I don't know how they got the guns, but there ought to be a federal law requiring all bank robberies use full-autos. For all the spraying and praying the perps did, there were zero fatalities resulting. If they had only had a single shot bolt-action rifle, they might have taken the trouble to aim, and might have killed somebody.

[nerdwithamachinegun]

They were illegally converted. Those guys had been picked up previously on weapons charges.

Factory full auto AK fire control parts are readily available. Converting an AK is a little involved but not too hard. I don't believe for a second that they used "hand made parts" in the sense that they machined an autosear out in the garage and welded a trip on the bolt carrier. They probably got all the neccessary parts then modified the receiver for the autosear and slapped it together.
One of the other weapons used was an HK91 which was also illegally converted. It fires a more powerful round and is more readily converted but is less controllable on auto and the magazines are usually of lower capacity. A G3 (military HK91) will rearrange your dental work. You've got to put some ass behind it to keep it under control.

The SKS was never designed as anything other than a semi-automatic infantry rifle. Originally they came with a 10 round semi/mostly-internal magazine loaded from the top by stripper clips like a '98 Mauser or '03 Springfield. Frequently they are modified with junky 30 round mags that usually don't work well.
The AK and SKS are very different rifles. Converting an SKS to work in semi AND full auto is pretty involved and not practical. The Chinese have produced factory examples of such rifles but not in large numbers.
Hacking nearly any semi-auto firearm to fire full auto is well within the capabilities of most idiots. The usefulness of automatic fire is an entirely different discussion.

I agree that a greater degree marksmanship probably would have ended things more quickly. I watched the TV coverage live and was pretty amazed at police rounds impacting six feet from the apparent targets.

Every single time you hear a talking head on TV say anything firearms related you are quite safe in assuming that they are completely wrong, ignorant and possibly being intentionally misleading. This is more frequently the case when a reporter utters the sounds "AK", "SKS", "machinegun", "assault rifle" and the word "automatic" in any relation to the subject of firearms.
Reporturds and scared witnesses frequently mistake an SKS for an AK.

[Conspiracy Guy]

I watched the New Orleans Howard Johnsons siege on live TV channel 10 in early 70s this was the pre SWAT days. The idiot police rushed a metal door on top of the building from two different angles that were such that they were deflecting rounds into each other. Back to N Hollywood, With a police issue sidearm a person who can't make a head shot at 50 yards needs to go to the range. It should have been obvious that a headshot was necessary. At anyrate I've seen little actual coverage and didn't know as much as you. Thanks

[Redbob]

"A little marksmanship"?
The LAPD was armed with handguns, the robbers with rifles!

"Outgunned" is the operative word here.

[Redbob]

"I'm sure it started by shaving the sheer pin, among other steps."

Doing that makes it 'full auto' alrighty, but it's one long rip - once you pull the trigger, she keeps on until the mag is empty.

Entertaining, perhaps, but not all that useful.

[Redbob]

Not everybody wearing body armor wears a sign saying "Hi! I'm wearing body armor today!"

[Conspiracy Guy]

The little bit of this I saw the perps were in handgun range for a headshot once the kevlar was evident. I understand how 2 gunmen could pin down a couple of cops with enough firepower but It seems they pinned down half the PD. Heck in Birmingham somebody would have been getting a BAR out of the trunk within 2 minutes of officer in trouble call.

[Conspiracy Guy]

Like I said the little bit of this I've seen, I'd have said body armor. I respect our law enforcement people more than most but they were under gunned and under armed.

[Conspiracy Guy]

And undertrained. If you use the sqaud car for cover make sure the engine is between you and the perp. I believe if I shoot twice at the chest and they don't go down the head is next. But these guys looked like hockey goalies with out head protection. Maybe I've been shooting to long but at the speed and distance I'd have made a headshot. The little bit I saw looked like TV Cops.

[archy]

A listing of the material taken by police in their October 23 1993 arrest can be found *here* The *AK47-type rifles were a Chinese Poly-tec and a MAK90; the 7.62 HK91 had been modified to selective fire using parts from a Mexican army G3 rifle, probably so modified in Mexico. Whether the parts for the similar modifications to the AKs were done by the same source is a matter of conjecture, but logical; but 75-round drums similar to those used by Phillips and Matasareanu are very common and in use by many of the various Mexican police agencies, and were also a fixture in the May 24 1999 murder of Mexican Archbishop Cardinal Juan Posadas Ocampo, killed at the Guadalajara airport when the Cardinal arrived to welcome the apostolic nuncio in Mexico, Archbishop Girolamo Prigione. That's certainly no *proof* that the Phillips and Matasareanu weapons , including tear gas and *flashbang* hand grenades came from corrupt police sources in either Mexico or the US, but it's certainly possible.

[m1911]

Thanks.