A sheriff’s deputy responds to the 1980 robbery of Security Pacific Bank on Hamner Avenue in Norco. (Photo by Greg Crowder, The Press-Enterprise)
Norco ’80
The true story of the most spectacular bank robbery in American history


The only way Riverside County Sheriff’s dispatcher Gary Keeter could explain what went down in Norco that day was that it had all happened so fast. “Riverside to Norco units, have a 211 in progress at the Security Pacific Bank at Fourth and Hamner.”

Within two seconds of Keeter’s initial dispatch, deputy Glyn Bolasky responded, “3-Edward-50, 1097,” indicating his radio ID and 1097, the code for “officer on scene.”

Bolasky was already 1097? thought Keeter. He was never en route. “Riverside to all, clear the air,” Keeter added, instructing all nonessential radio traffic to cease.

Deputy Glyn Bolasky had been stopped in the left turn lane at Hamner and Fourth Street staring straight at the Security Pacific Bank when Keeter’s 211 tone for a robbery in progress went out. Activating his overhead lights, he made the left onto Fourth Street toward the east entrance of the parking lot, scanning the lot and bank building as he went. Immediately, Bolasky heard a muffled popping noise and saw red and blue plastic falling around his unit. Momentarily distracted, Bolasky never saw the man in the ski mask standing beside the green van shooting out his light bar with an assault rifle.

On the phone at the dispatch center, Gladys Wiza scribbled something on an index card and slid it in front of Keeter. Keeter looked down. Now we got a real problem, he thought.  “3-Edward-50,” he radioed. “The suspect vehicle is a green van with weapons.”

If Bolasky heard the transmission at all, it was too late to do anything about it. As he swung his patrol car into the bank parking lot, four men in black ski masks and olive-drab field jackets came into view no more than two car lengths in front of Bolasky’s unit. An instant later, Bolasky’s windshield glazed into an intricate spider web as three rounds crashed through it. He felt his face and arms go hot as flying glass peppered him like birdshot. The young deputy threw his body across the bench seat for cover.  “3-Edward-50 taking fire!” he yelled into his mic, gunshots in the background cracking with the irregular cadence of popping corn.

Only 28 seconds after initial dispatch, Keeter keyed up the dispatch mic again. “It’s a green van. It’s Fourth and Hamner. They are shooting.”

The robbers carjacked a van to use in the robbery, which was disabled as the fled the Security Pacific Bank in Norco. Getaway driver Billy Delgado was shot and killed as he drove away. (Photo courtesy of Riverside Sheriff’s Office)

Manny Delgado walked in front of the van, lowered the riot gun, and unloaded several booming shotgun blasts. “We’ve got a hostage in here!” George Smith screamed in Bolasky’s direction, but the only thing Glyn Bolasky could hear were bullets ripping into the metal surrounding him, blowing out windows, the muzzle blasts echoing back from a cinder block wall behind him. There was sharp pain in his left shoulder as a round came through the dashboard, sending fragments of lead and copper jacketing into his flesh.

Still lying across the bench seat, Bolasky grabbed the steering wheel with one hand, jerked the gearshift into reverse, and slammed on the accelerator. Bullets pinged off the Impala as it shot backward out of the parking lot onto Fourth Street, clipping a Ford Thunderbird driven by 15-year-old Jody Ann Tygart, behind the wheel taking a driving lesson from her father. Swerving into the oncoming lane, the Thunderbird sideswiped a Buick Regal and careened eastbound on Fourth Street, coming to a stop 75 feet beyond Bolasky. There was a sharp crack as a bullet came through the back window and fragmented, grazing Darryel Tygart on the side of the head and hitting his daughter Jody Ann in the back.

Traveling another 30 feet east on Fourth Street in reverse, Bolasky’s vehicle skidded to a stop sideways in the middle of the road. Throwing the release on the shotgun mount, Bolasky felt blood running down his face and arm. “I’ve been hit!” he radioed.

Deputy Glyn Bolasky’s car was shot up and the deputy injured as soon as he arrived at the bank. Over the course of the gun battle 32 police vehicles were destroyed or disabled. (Photo courtesy of Riverside Sheriff’s Office)

Two seconds later, Keeter sent out the transmission that changed everything: “Officer hit. Clear the air. 1199.”

Across Riverside County, every patrol car in the field, every detective at a desk, every undercover narc on stakeout, every helicopter in the sky, every officer from California Highway Patrol, Riverside PD, or the RSO stopped what he or she was doing to converge on the intersection of Fourth and Hamner.


Crouching behind the Impala holding his shotgun, Glyn Bolasky heard the screeching of tires as the van came out of the bank parking lot and turned away from him toward Hamner. When Bolasky came up with the shotgun, the back windows of the van exploded out and he began taking fire from the men inside. With bullets striking the body of the patrol unit in front of him, Bolasky pumped all four rounds from the Wingmaster at the rear of the van 25 feet away.

A single ball of lead the size of a standard BB traveling 1,300 feet per second flew through the length of the van and struck Billy Delgado at the base of his skull, entering the cranial cavity just north of the medulla oblongata. Instantly, Billy’s somatic nervous system ceased relaying voluntary commands below that point. But the medulla itself dutifully carried on its job of running the autonomic nervous system that kept Billy’s vital organs functioning. Passing through the brain stem, that one shot of #4 buck punched a hole through the cartilage wall of his trachea, allowing his still-beating heart to pump blood into his still-breathing lungs. That’s when Billy Delgado began the process of slowly drowning in his own blood.

Without Billy, the van decelerated and drifted harmlessly off the road into a chain-link fence on the north side of Fourth Street, coming to a stop just a few feet short of Hamner Avenue.


The moment George Smith realized the van was not moving, he knew what had happened to his driver. Billy was slumped limply to the right side, involuntarily convulsing. In the passenger seat, Manny was shaking him, calling his name, trying to push him up straight. But Billy’s body was dead weight.

“I’m getting out of here,” Chris yelled. “I’m not getting toasted in this van.”

“Go out the back,” George said, grabbing duffel bags and tossing them in the direction of the side cargo door. “We need another vehicle.”

Chris put a foot up on the back seat and went straight out the shattered back window still holding his Heckler. He fell onto the street and then popped up, aiming the assault rifle toward the police car still sideways in the road. Russ followed his brother out the same way with the “Shorty” AR. Manny grabbed the riot gun, climbed over his dying brother, and out the driver’s door. Alone in the van, George grabbed his Heckler .308. and took a final look around. His eyes settled on the cabinet holding their hostage and saw it punctured and gouged with buckshot. That dude was dead, for sure.


Glyn Bolasky tossed his empty shotgun onto the pavement, drew his .357 Python service revolver, and crouched behind the front tire again. With a break in the gunfire, he came up, aiming the gun over the hood of the Impala. Standing at the rear of the van was a man holding a rifle at his hip with the barrel leveled directly at Bolasky. Staring out from the single eye hole in a black ski mask, he did not look so much like a man as he did some sort of gothic nightmare, a hooded executioner about to drop the guillotine.

Riverside deputy Glyn Bolasky was shot by the robbers as he responded to the Security Pacific bank in Norco. (Photo by Riverside Press-Enterprise)

The two men fired at each other almost simultaneously, Bolasky getting off a single round, which hit low, throwing up a puff of dirt and asphalt. He dove back down behind the front tire, rounds striking his patrol unit, zinging off the pavement, whizzing homicidally overhead. When he came up again, there was a second man alongside the first, each firing from the hip. Bolasky raised his .357 and got off two more rounds. Then something jerked his left arm backward. When he looked, there was a hole on the inside of his left elbow. Blood began squirting onto his face.


A mile directly north on Hamner Avenue at the Donut Corral on Sixth Street, deputies Chuck Hille and Andy Delgado threw down their coffee cups and jumped into their vehicles at the first 211 dispatch. The two men split up, Delgado heading down Hamner and Hille paralleling him on Sierra.

Turning westbound onto Fourth Street from Sierra, rounds struck the radiator and hood of Hille’s patrol unit so hard he felt the impacts resonating through the frame of the Plymouth Fury. “2-Edward-59, we’re taking fire now,” Hille radioed. He began zigzagging his car to evade gunfire and then jerked the wheel right, heading into a dirt lot. As he skidded his cruiser to a stop, Hille heard a chilling transmission coming from Bolasky.

“3-Edward-50, I’m bleeding badly. I have an artery hit. I need help!”

Hille threw open the driver’s door and headed toward Bolasky’s position, dashing the last 50 feet across a wide-open field of fire as bullets thudded into the dirt around him. When he reached Bolasky, what he saw alarmed him. There were fragments of glass embedded in his fellow deputy’s face, and blood was dripping from his chin and cheeks onto his uniform shirt. Bolasky was pale white and gripping his left elbow.

Let me see it, Hille said. Bolasky lifted his hand off the wound and a jet of blood spurted onto Hille’s uniform. Hille clamped Bolasky’s hand back over the elbow to stop the bleeding. Another tire on the Impala took a round and blew out. Hille reached for Bolasky’s .357. He emptied the spent rounds from the cylinder, reloaded and pushed the gun back into Bolasky’s hand. Let’s get to those trees, Hille said, helping Bolasky to his feet. The two men took off running to a row of eucalyptus trees.

Chuck Hille knew he needed to get Glyn Bolasky out of there. “Stay here,” he said. For a second time, Hille crossed the open field to his unit parked in the dirt lot. There was the sound of shotgun blasts and then the cracking of rifles as he ran, but this time there was no sign of rounds striking anywhere near him.

Reaching his patrol unit, Hille swung a big looping U-turn, crossed the dirt lot and Fourth Street, jumped the curb, and pulled up to Bolasky’s location. “Get in the back!” he called. Bolasky dove into the back seat. Hille took off away from the intersection and turned right onto Sierra, focused on a single task: get Glyn Bolasky to Corona Community Hospital before he bled out in the back seat of an RSO patrol unit.

Chuck Hille did not know the reason why he had not taken fire as he ran back to his car that final time. The gunmen had abruptly shifted their attention to a man standing behind the door of a Riverside County Sheriff’s patrol unit on Hamner Avenue, pumping shotgun blasts into their midst. That man was deputy Andy Delgado.


Coming Sunday: Part 7 – Deputy Andy Delgado enters the fray and engages in fire with the bank robbers.

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