Police Feted for NoHo Gun Battle Heroism

By GREG SANDOVAL

June 30, 1997 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Four months have passed and still the public pays tribute. While the North Hollywood shootout may no longer be the center of the country’s attention, many North Hollywood residents have vivid memories of two masked bank robbers blasting away with machine guns in front of their homes.

By the time it was all over on Feb. 28, several streets around the Bank of America on Laurel Canyon Boulevard were strewn with glass, bullets and blood. Robbers Larry Eugene Phillips Jr. and Emil Dechebal Matasareanu were dead and five civilians and 11 police officers were wounded.

On Sunday, about 200 people, including sheriff’s deputies, FBI agents, Los Angeles Police Department officers, politicians and members of the public, gathered in the bank’s parking lot in a kind of shootout love fest.

Sponsored by the Bank of America, the party was held to show a community’s gratitude to the officers who saved the day during a suburban nightmare.

“We came out to tell [police] we’re proud of them,” said Antonio de Arce, a Sun Valley resident. “They did a great job protecting lives. That’s a reason for a party.”

It seemed like a reunion of war buddies.

Police officers and civilians ate free barbecue, reminisced about their parts in the shootout and had their pictures taken with people they got close to during the drama.

Officer James Zboravan greeted Dr. Jorge Montes with both hands. Montes, a dentist who treated Zboravan’s wounds from the gunfight, smiled broadly.

In the first few minutes of the battle, Zboravan and three other officers were pinned down behind a locksmith shop directly across the street from the bank.

Bullets fired from the gunmen’s AK-47s were shredding the small building, and Zboravan was wounded. With little cover, he and another officer made a break to reach the building where Montes’ office was. They crashed through the window, and Montes treated their wounds.

On Sunday, a stranger snapped their picture.

“We’re friends now,” said Zboravan, who received 50 stitches for wounds in his leg and back. “I’ve gone to see him since that day.”

Gatherings like the one Sunday and a block party held June 7 on nearby Archwood Street show that people understand the perilous nature of police work, officers said.

“It’s good to be out with the community,” Zboravan said. “It’s good to see that they are behind us.”

Sgt. Dean Haynes, who was hit in the shoulder by a bullet fragment during the shootout, compared the nationally televised gun battle with another high-profile incident that occurred in the San Fernando Valley: the videotaped beating of Rodney G. King in 1991.

The heroism of law enforcement officials during the shootout had the opposite impact on public opinion from that of the beating, he said.

“That incident was not a good representation of who policemen are,” he said. “North Hollywood was--and now everyone knows it.”