At approximately 3:40 p.m., five men armed with shotguns, a G3 rifle, HK93s, handguns, AR-15s, a katana and an improvised explosive device robbed the Norco branch of Security Pacific Bank.
The perpetrators then stole a vehicle in the bank parking lot and fled the scene, leading police on a 25-mile (40 km) car chase into neighboring San Bernardino County.
Riverside County Sheriff Deputy Glyn Bolasky was the first officer to arrive at the scene, having been sitting in his car at a red light across from the bank when he was informed of the robbery.
[2] By this time, Deputies Charles Hille and Andy Delgado (no relation to killed robber brothers Belisario and Manuel) had arrived at the scene.
The robbers continued to fire at other officers arriving at the scene and attempted to escape again by commandeering a truck (owned by Michael C. Linville) stopped at an intersection in front of the bank.
The suspects pulled far ahead of the pursuing police officers on a rural road, and stopped to ambush the deputies as they approached a dead end.
"[4] The next day, three of the gunmen were arrested without incident by a group of law enforcement officers under the command of San Bernardino Assistant Sheriff Floyd Tidwell.
The fourth, Manuel Delgado, was hit four times in a shootout with a 65-man Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department SWAT team in the foothills and killed.
The three surviving suspects, George Wayne Smith and brothers Christopher and Russell Harven, were convicted of 46 felonies and sentenced to life in prison without parole.
[5] In response to the fact that the suspects' weapons were superior to that of the police responding to the incident, the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department equipped their deputies with Ruger Mini-14s chambered in .223 Remington as well as the M16 and AR-15.
[8] In January 2021, LAist Studio from Southern California Public Radio released the ten-part podcast "Norco ‘80: God, Guns, Survivalism and the Bank Robbery that Changed Policing Forever," based on Houlahan's book.