Phil Cassidy

Background

Phil Cassidy is a hard-drinking arms dealer who runs Phil's Place, a junkyard compound and firing range in Little Haiti. He is a gun enthusiast with a patriotic streak who boasts about military service, though army records suggest he was repeatedly turned away. He distills his own explosive moonshine, which he calls boomshine, and he is fighting a long feud with a gang of Mexican gun runners led by Pedro Garcia. He has worked jobs with the safecracker Cam Jones in the past.

Phil's Place sits at the edge of Little Haiti, close to the junkyard.

Events of GTA Vice City

• When Tommy Vercetti plans a bank robbery after buying the Malibu Club, Phil is recruited as the gunman. In The Shootist he challenges Tommy to a shooting contest at the Downtown Ammu-Nation range, and Tommy must outscore him.
• Phil suggests the getaway driver Hilary King, which leads to The Driver.
• In The Job, Phil goes into El Banco Corrupto Grande with Tommy and Cam Jones, keeping the hostages under control while the vault is opened.
• After the heist, Phil calls Tommy to his yard. In Gun Runner, a boomshine still explodes and destroys Phil's truck, and Phil asks Tommy to hit Garcia's weapon trucks and bring back the crates.
• In Boomshine Saigon, a drunk Phil shows off his boomshine bombs and accidentally blows off his right arm. Tommy, dizzy from the fumes, drives him to a surgeon. Phil survives, and heavy weapons go on sale at Phil's Place afterward.

Personality

Phil is loud, reckless and permanently tipsy, but he is also warm, loyal and surprisingly professional when it comes to firearms. He laughs off his own injuries and tells tall tales about the wars he fought, yet he is one of the few people in Vice City who never betrays Tommy.

His boomshine is both his pride and his downfall: in Gun Runner a still explodes and destroys his truck, and in Boomshine Saigon it costs him an arm.

Relationships

• Tommy Vercetti: a close friend and business partner.
• Cam Jones and Hilary King: former accomplices who join the bank job.
• Pedro Garcia: his main rival in the arms trade.
• Ken Rosenberg: part of the same bank job crew assembled at the Malibu Club.

Trivia

• Phil is voiced by Gary Busey.
• He appears in several Grand Theft Auto games, including GTA III, Liberty City Stories and Vice City Stories. In GTA III, set later, he is missing an arm, which is explained by Boomshine Saigon.
• After Boomshine Saigon, Phil's Place sells heavy weapons such as the Minigun, M60 and Rocket Launcher.
• Phil's Place has its own shooting range and is where his missions start.