A Day in the Life of an Event Staff Employee or, What Ever Happened to the Other Guys?

The following is my best recollection of the North Hollywood Shoot Out

February 28, 1997

This posting of "A Day In The Life" flows in the same vain as the A Day In The Life Of An Airport Shuttle Driver. Its all about my life chapter during the 1990's while earning a living in the San Fernando Valley, Los Angeles, California. But this time, rather than the Northridge Earthquake we're on the Universal Studios hill watching the Bank of America in North Hollywood. Wow what a day.

photo courtesy of Personlliberty.com

First, let me begin by adamantly stating that although memory fades, I know what I saw...they did not catch everyone. Unlike my piece on the Northridge Earthquake this is not so much the telling of a story as it is an observation with a question.

One of many places of employment I had in the 1990's was for an event security company hired by at the time known as the Universal Amphitheatre at Universal Studios. It was actually a cool place to work considering the pay was horrible. I was however blessed with other jobs as well as free music, food and sometimes clothing from the many people who wanted the "hook up" for backstage access or from fellow employees. Always a fan of music I found it fascinating how some bands I would hear on the radio and not care too much for, my attitude would change once I heard them play live in a good venue with a great sound system.

On that particular day as event staff, my station was the double doors on the backstage patio that led to the parking lot and the studio tour tram stop. Inside the doors, roughly three yards away sat a large, over sized TV monitor. These monitors were placed everywhere backstage, inside the venue house and the entrance to the Amphitheatre itself.

Memory fades but this was a week long preparation for either an award show or something like Comic Relief with Robin Williams, Billy Crystal and Whoopi Goldberg.*** Through out the week the monitors would broadcast the walk through and rehearsals onstage. I don't remember which Los Angeles news crew had their van parked out back but I always wondered if what was on the monitors was the same thing that the news crew saw in their van. Whether or not what we saw was broadcast to LA viewers I don't know for sure. But when the chanel changed to a view from the sky I saw several men walking around with assault rifles pretty much firing in all directions. Needless to say all work stopped and everyone backstage where I was stared quietly in disbelief at what was going down just a short distance away from our position.

By now, everyone knows the LAPD had their hands full on this afternoon. But here's my question. Why does everything on the Internet speak of only two guys rather then the four or more that were actually involved?

photo courtesy of lapd.com

1) I can appreciate the fact that memory fades and I don't want to be accused of "misremembering" things. But I'm confadent I saw four men on the monitor.

2) During this week, one of our fellow employees would leave for 90:min to attend a college class. Each day after class he would go home to eat lunch then rush back to Universal. About 2:min after the police caught the second guy Robert (I think that was his name) arived backstage, his face ashen and obviously visibly shaken.

He said something similar to this:

(again, memory fades)

"After I ate I left my house through the back ally. When I made a left into the ally there was a guy holding an AK pointing at me and one on his back. He tried to take my car so I floored it backwards probably taking out every trash can..."

This young man lived over a mile away from that B of A and he clearly wasn't lying based on the fear on his face. He had no idea what had taken place until we got him to calm down and look at the monitors.

3) Another employee who worked directly for the Amphitheatre received a call from a friend or family member who either owned or worked at the closest gun shop. He was told LAPD cars were lined up and the shop staff were dumping weapons and ammunition into the trunks of each black and white.

My point with number 3 is all the reports state around 1750 rounds were fired between the police and the gunmen. This number seems a bit low unless there were just two guys. But according to reports, there were 300 sworn officers on the scene. Add to that the back up weapons and ammunition that showed up, plus consider that there were four or more guys 1750 might be low balling it. Personally I'm not into firearms so this is only speculation on my part.

4) The broadcast we were watching that day, as well as the 1st video posted below say "5 or more men walked into the BofA..." So 300 police officers came from all over the county to get there arses handed to them by just 2 guys...really!?

5) At around +00:10:42 seconds into the video, the news guy in the helicopter says "...I'm getting reports from our pilot that they are actually firing on us right now... ". Yet the shots are not coming from the 2 guys we follow to the end of the video. At +00:20:02 "suspects have been firing in the air." But not the 2 guys we see in this video. At +00:21:10 "...that would leave at least 3 suspects at large".

Folks, you have to understand this has been bugging me in the back of my mind for twenty three years. Here's the deal! All I really want to know is what happened to the other guys?