Officer Hurt in Shootout Recalls Chaos

A Los Angeles police officer wounded in a running gun battle with two suspects in the 1997 North Hollywood bank robbery shootout recalled the chaotic event Thursday in a federal civil rights trial.

Conrado Torrez, 39, testified as the first defense witness in a lawsuit by the children of slain suspect Emil Matasareanu. They claim their badly wounded father was denied medical care and allowed to bleed to death.

Choked with emotion, Torrez described in vivid detail how he raced to the crime scene and watched as Matasareanu and Larry Eugene Phillips Jr., clad in full body armor, fired indiscriminately from assault weapons at “anything that moved,” including police officers and civilians.

Despite orders to stay down, Torrez told the jurors, “I had to do something, so I stepped out” and began firing at the gunmen with his 9-millimeter service revolver.

Although grazed by a bullet in the neck, Torrez pursued Matasareanu and Phillips separately, trading shots with them as they tried to flee. For his actions, he was awarded his department’s highest award for bravery, the Medal of Honor.

He was called to the stand by Assistant City Atty. Don Vincent to buttress defense claims that the crime scene was too dangerous to allow an ambulance crew to treat the badly wounded Matasareanu after his capture.

Attorneys Stephen Yagman and Victor Sherman are representing Matasareanu’s two children in the lawsuit against the city and retired officers John Futrell and James Vojtecky.

Under cross-examination by Sherman on Thursday, Torrez, a former Army medic, said that Matasareanu was bleeding badly from numerous gunshots wounds.

Asked if he thought it was important to get immediate help to save his life, the officer said, “Yeah.” He said he put out a call for an ambulance right after helping place Matasareanu in handcuffs.

An ambulance sent to the scene left without picking up the wounded suspect.

Alan Skier, a Fire Department emergency medical technician, testified earlier in the day that he refused to treat Matasareanu because he feared the man was booby-trapped. He said a police officer warned him that he was in a “kill zone” when he approached Matasareanu and told him: “Get the [expletive] out of here. There are suspects in the area.”

But Torrez testified under cross-examination that by the time Skier’s ambulance arrived, the shooting had stopped and he considered the immediate crime scene secure.

He also said that he had patted down Matasareanu after handcuffing him and found nothing to suggest that he had booby-trapped himself with an explosive device.

The trial will resume Tuesday.