Officer Shot in N. Hollywood Gun Battle Tells of Wait for Aid

A former police officer who was seriously wounded in the North Hollywood bank robbery shootout testified Friday that rescuers were unable to reach him for at least half an hour because of persistent gunfire.

“I was thinking about dying,” said Martin Whitfield, who walks with a limp as a result of his injuries. “I was shot four times, and nobody was coming to rescue me. All I could hear was the automatic gunfire.”

Whitfield, 33, was called as a defense witness in a federal civil rights lawsuit brought against the Los Angeles Police Department on behalf of one gunman’s children.

The suit accuses the police of withholding medical treatment from captured robber Emil Matasareanu. Shot 29 times, he died while lying handcuffed for nearly an hour in the street.

Assistant City Atty. Don Vincent called Whitfield to show that medical attention was slow in coming to wounded people other than Matasareanu, including police officers.

On the stand, Whitfield said he radioed for help 10 to 15 times. At one point, he said, he called off a rescue attempt by fellow officers because he feared they would come under fire.

Finally, he said, a team of SWAT officers arrived in a Brinks armored truck and carried him inside, then they picked up another wounded officer and three injured civilians. Whitfield said that as the truck left the scene he could still hear automatic weapons fire.

Victor Sherman, who represents one of Matasareanu’s two children in the suit, tried to get Whitfield to admit that he must have considered the situation reasonably safe, despite the sounds of gunfire, when he resumed his radio calls for help.

Whitfield said, however, that he did so instinctively, rather than as a result of any conscious decision.

Clad head to toe in body armor and firing assault rifles, Matasareanu, 30, and his partner, Larry Eugene Phillips Jr., 26, wounded 11 police officers and six civilians after a botched robbery at a Bank of America branch on Laurel Canyon Boulevard on Feb. 28, 1997. Phillips died during the shootout.

Whitfield was unable to return to work because of his injuries; he retired with a disability pension.