David Anthony Mack (born May 30, 1961) is a former professional runner and Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officer involved in the
Rampart Division
The Rampart Division of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) serves communities to the west of Downtown Los Angeles (DTLA) including Silver Lake, Echo Park, Pico-Union and Westlake, all together designated as the Rampart patrol area. Its na ...
robbery
Robbery is the crime of taking or attempting to take anything of value by force, threat of force, or by use of fear. According to common law, robbery is defined as taking the property of another, with the intent to permanently deprive the perso ...
federal prison
A federal prison is operated under the jurisdiction of a federal government as opposed to a state or provincial body. Federal prisons are used for convicts who violated federal law (U.S., Mexico), inmates considered dangerous (Brazil), or those s ...
. Mack has never revealed the whereabouts of the money.
Early life
As an athlete, David Mack ran track for Locke High School and was champion at the
CIF California State Meet
The CIF California State Meet is the annual championship track and field meet for the California Interscholastic Federation. The meet was started in 1915 for boys and 1974 for girls. Every athlete in every high school in California has a direc ...
at 880 yards for two years in a row.
He attended the University of Oregon where he ran track with his high school rival Jeff West. After West transferred to UCLA, Mack considered following suit, but was convinced to stay at UO by coach
Bill Dellinger
William "Bill" Solon Dellinger (born March 23, 1934) is a retired American middle-distance runner. He competed in the 5,000 m at the 1956, 1960 and 1964 Olympics and won a bronze medal in 1964, setting his personal record.Flo Jo. In 1980, as a freshman in college, he finished sixth in the
Olympic Trials
Olympic or Olympics may refer to
Sports
Competitions
* Olympic Games, international multi-sport event held since 1896
** Summer Olympic Games
** Winter Olympic Games
* Ancient Olympic Games, ancient multi-sport event held in Olympia, Greece bet ...
. Mack won three
Pac-10
The Pac-12 Conference is a collegiate List of NCAA conferences, athletic conference, that operates in the Western United States, participating in 24 sports at the NCAA Division I level. Its College football, football teams compete in the NCAA D ...
United States national team
The United States national team or Team USA may refer to any of a number of sports team representing the United States in international competitions.
Olympic teams
Additionally, these teams may compete in other international competitions such as ...
1983 World Championships in Athletics
The 1st 1983 World Championships in Athletics were run under the auspices of the International Association of Athletics Federations and were held at the Olympic Stadium in Helsinki, Finland between 7 and 14 August 1983.
Summary
The overall med ...
but failed to advance to the final. He was the
rabbit
Rabbits, also known as bunnies or bunny rabbits, are small mammals in the family Leporidae (which also contains the hares) of the order Lagomorpha (which also contains the pikas). ''Oryctolagus cuniculus'' includes the European rabbit speci ...
in
Sydney Maree
Sydney Maree (born September 9, 1956) is a former middle distance runner who competed at the international level in the 1980s. He was the first South African to run officially under 3:30 in the 1500m. He was born in Cullinan, South Africa, but l ...
's 1500 meter world record and one week later rabbited
Steve Ovett
Stephen Michael James Ovett, (; born 9 October 1955) is a retired British track athlete. A middle-distance runner, he was the gold medalist in the 800 metres at the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow, and set 5 world records for 1500 metres and the ...
to surpass that record. A stress fracture in his shin caused him to fail to make it out of the heats at the 1984 USATF Championships. In 1985 he ran 1:43.35 seconds which at the time was the second fastest time ever by an American and still ranks 9th fastest. He failed to advance from the heats in the
800m
The 800 metres, or meters ( US spelling), is a common track running event. It is the shortest commonly run middle-distance running event. The 800 metres is run over two laps of an outdoor (400-metre) track and has been an Olympic event since the ...
at the
1987 World Championships in Athletics
The 2nd World Championships in Athletics under the auspices of the International Association of Athletics Federations were held in the Stadio Olimpico in Rome, Italy between August 28 and September 6, 1987.
Men's results
Track
1983 , 1987 ...
. Beset by fatigue from iron deficiency, his last professional race was in 1988.
Police career
Mack joined the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) in 1988. He first worked as a patrol officer and then as an undercover narcotics officer. Mack next moved to a late shift in West Los Angeles in 1990, where he began a relationship with Errolyn Romero, a nineteen-year-old ticket taker at the Baldwin Theatre. Mack was awarded the LAPD Medal for Heroism in 1993 for shooting a drug dealer who reportedly threatened his partner, Rafael "Ray" Pérez, although the event described by the two was later discovered to be a lie, and that the officers additionally had planted a gun on the suspect.
Bank robbery
In August 1997, Romero became employed at a Bank of America branch near the University of Southern California campus. On November 6, 1997, Mack entered the bank and claimed he wanted to access his safe deposit box. Romero admitted him to the secure area, where he threw her to the floor and
robbed
Robbery is the crime of taking or attempting to take anything of value by force, threat of force, or by use of fear. According to common law, robbery is defined as taking the property of another, with the intent to permanently deprive the perso ...
the vault of $722,000.
In her capacity as branch assistant manager, Romero had ordered double the usual amount of cash to be on hand at the bank on the day of the robbery. After one month of investigation, Romero confessed to her role in the crime and implicated Mack as the mastermind. He was arrested in December 1997. His two accomplices were never caught.
Mack was sentenced to fourteen years and three months in prison and has never revealed the whereabouts of the money. He was released on May 14, 2010.
According to the Tupac documentary ''Assassination: Battle for Compton'', citing official legal documents, a reliable jail informant by the name of Ken Boagni, who befriended Rafael Perez in prison, stated Perez claimed the money stolen in the bank robbery was intended to go to Harry Billups, also known as Amir Muhammed, who was friends with Mack, for allegedly carrying out the murder of late rapper Christopher Wallace, also known as Biggie Smalls, because Billups was not paid in full by his contractors, namely Reggie Wright Jr. and David Kenner, because he failed to also murder Sean Combs, the second intended target. Boagni claimed both Perez and Mack were involved in the murder of Wallace, but Billups was the shooter.
Relation to the murder of The Notorious B.I.G.
In April 2007, the estate of Christopher Wallace, a rapper who performed under the name The Notorious B.I.G., filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the City of Los Angeles, which also named Mack, Pérez, and Nino Durden as defendants.
The lawsuit alleged that the officers conspired to murder Wallace, and that Pérez and Mack were present the night of the drive-by shooting which claimed his life on March 9, 1997. In 2010, a federal judge dismissed the lawsuit against the city and the officers.
Depictions in media
In the biography film ''
City of Lies
''City of Lies'' is a 2018 crime thriller film about the investigations by the Los Angeles Police Department of the murders of rappers Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G. It is directed by Brad Furman, with a screenplay by Christian Contreras ba ...
'', David Mack is played by Shamier Anderson. The film features the 1997 bank robbery.