"Rodney King, motorist whose beating by Los Angeles police officers sparked deadly US race riots, dead at 47"

Rodney King, the black motorist whose videotaped beating by Los Angeles police officers in 1991 sparked some of the deadliest race riots in U.S. history, was found dead on Sunday, police said. He was 47.

Police in Rialto, Calif., found King's body in a swimming pool after getting a 911 call from his fiancee, Rialto Police Capt. Randy Deanda told NBC News. Officers pulled King from the pool and began doing CPR but he was unresponsive.

King was transported to Arrowhead Hospital in Colton, where he was pronounced dead at 6:11 a.m. PDT, Deanda said.

The death was being investigated as a drowning and there were no signs of foul play, police said.

King was beaten by Los Angeles Police Department officers on March 3, 1991, after he was stopped for speeding. Four officers hit him more than 50 times, kicked him and shot him with stun guns. A bystander videotaped much of the incident from a distance.

Twenty years after Los Angeles police officers were acquitted of charges they brutally beat motorist Rodney King, TODAY's Lester Holt looks back at the case and how it changed the Los Angeles police department and how Americans view the justice system.

A year later, a California jury acquitted the four officers, three of whom were white and one Hispanic.

The riots that erupted on April 29, 1992, were among the most lethal in U.S. history. By the time order was restored, 53 people had died, nearly 3,000 people were injured and thousands of businesses were damaged or destroyed.

In one of the most searing images from the riots, a 33-year-old white construction worker named Reginald Denny was pulled from his vehicle and beaten unconscious by four men at a Los Angeles intersection. Twenty years later, he has still not recovered from his injuries.

tmontyb wrote:Saw this earlier. May he rest in peace. I was reading some of the comments on Yahoo. Simply disgusting. I don't what the hell is wrong with some people. This racism crap needs to stop.

Suzi wrote:The claim was that people didn't see what lead up to the beating, however to my mind no one deserved to be beaten the way the cops beat King. One of the problems was the cops in LA were racist from the get-go I remembered back to the Watts riots when a cop told us about knowing there were people inside a burning building and the cops locked the doors so no one could get out. What faith I had in the police died there with that story. How anyone could knowingly literally murder people that way was appalling. Then along came Rodney King and the trial that allowed the cops to walk free was just too much. After that Rodney King was targeted by the police so one often heard about him being pulled over , arrested for things that never seemed to stick. May he rest in the peace he wasn't allowed in life.

CeCe wrote:

And that claim is outright bullshit. It doesn't matter what lead up to it. Those officers had countless opportunities to subdue & place him in the cruiser. Sometimes a gun & a badge makes people think they can do whatever they want.

CeCe wrote:

And that claim is outright bullshit. It doesn't matter what lead up to it. Those officers had countless opportunities to subdue & place him in the cruiser. Sometimes a gun & a badge makes people think they can do whatever they want.

Supernova wrote:

And the system proves that they can, if you got a badge you can shoot somebody 50 times and sabes que, that's alright, not guilty, back to work.

tmontyb wrote:Saw this earlier. May he rest in peace. I was reading some of the comments on Yahoo. Simply disgusting. I don't what the hell is wrong with some people. This racism crap needs to stop.

Bluesmama wrote:My sympathy for the King beating has always been very limited. I remember the tapes and it didn't look to me like Rodney tried much to cooperate. King chose to NOT pull over, putting everyone on the freeway at risk while drunk. Now, had he killed someone during that high-speed chase (especially if it included a chld) you know that the outcry would be against the cops for NOT pinning him down first.

Bluesmama wrote:My sympathy for the King beating has always been very limited. I remember the tapes and it didn't look to me like Rodney tried much to cooperate. King chose to NOT pull over, putting everyone on the freeway at risk while drunk. Now, had he killed someone during that high-speed chase (especially if it included a chld) you know that the outcry would be against the cops for NOT pinning him down first.

Supernova wrote:

This may be true but even if he DID kill somebody, even that wouldn't warrant the beating that was caught on tape, no matter how much people might think he deserved it.

Bluesmama wrote:My sympathy for the King beating has always been very limited. I remember the tapes and it didn't look to me like Rodney tried much to cooperate. King chose to NOT pull over, putting everyone on the freeway at risk while drunk. Now, had he killed someone during that high-speed chase (especially if it included a chld) you know that the outcry would be against the cops for NOT pinning him down first.

Nystyle709 wrote:


You gotta be fucking kidding me! A scenario that DIDN'T happen is no excuse for the cops brutally beat him the way they did. They could've cuffed him, but they chose otherwise.

Bluesmama wrote:My sympathy for the King beating has always been very limited.

Bluesmama wrote:My sympathy for the King beating has always been very limited. I remember the tapes and it didn't look to me like Rodney tried much to cooperate. King chose to NOT pull over, putting everyone on the freeway at risk while drunk. Now, had he killed someone during that high-speed chase (especially if it included a chld) you know that the outcry would be against the cops for NOT pinning him down first.

tmontyb wrote:


Frankly, I'm disgusted by this comment. I don't give a freak how much it "appeared" he may not have cooperated. That doesn't give the police the right to abuse their authority.

tmontyb wrote:
Frankly, I'm disgusted by this comment. I don't give a freak how much it "appeared" he may not have cooperated. That doesn't give the police the right to abuse their authority.

CeCe wrote:
a thousand times. Regardless of the situation leading up to the original chase or what happened later has zip to do with the fact these cops stepped way out of bounds. Their job was to cuff him, place him in the cruiser & take him to jail. All this other coulda/mighta/after the fact shit is deflection. The cops didn't keep the public safer by beating the living shit out of him. And it isn't their job to exact revenge. What they did is the definition of abuse of authority.

Rodney King's neighbors heard 'commotion' at his house

Rodney King's neighbors on East Jackson Street in Rialto said they heard "a little bit of a commotion" from his house late Saturday and early Sunday, something they said was out of character for their typically quiet neighbor.

King, whose beating by Los Angeles police helped spark the 1992 L.A. riots, was pronounced dead at a Colton hospital at 6:11 a.m. Sunday, authorities said. His fiancée called 911 about 5:25 a.m. when she found King at the bottom of his backyard pool.

Detectives are investigating the death as a drowning, said Rialto Police Capt. Randy DeAnda. King was known to be a good swimmer and there were no indications he suffered any trauma, or that alcohol or drugs were a factor, although that will not be determined until the coroner completes an autopsy and toxicology tests.

Next-door neighbor Sandra Gardea, 31, said she heard what appeared to be a small gathering in King’s backyard early Sunday morning that grew loud enough for others to complain.

Gardea said about 3 or 3:30 a.m. she heard someone sobbing.

“It just sounded like someone was really sad,” she said. “There was a lot of moaning and crying. Another person was trying to console that person.”

She said it was several hours later when she heard a splash, and that’s when police and paramedics arrived.

King and a friend had been poolside Saturday afternoon and into the evening, DeAnda said. King's fiancée, Cynthia Kelley, talked to him Saturday night before she went to bed, he said.

Kelley was the only person home at the time, DeAnda said. King’s friend had gone home earlier.

Gardea said King rarely had gatherings and there had never been any problems with parties at King’s house.

Neighbor Bob Carlberg, 53, who lives two doors away, said he also heard what he described as a small party most of the night in King’s backyard.

“Last night I heard a little bit of commotion. It wasn’t really like a fight-fight fight. Sort of yelling back and forth," Carlberg said.

He continued: “I couldn’t really make it out. The neighbors behind, I heard they were screaming at him to be quiet. About 4:30 a.m. or 5 o’clock, it kind of got quiet."
But Carlberg said that overall King was a great neighbor, very private, who "really kept to himself."

"He’s one of the best neighbors in the neighborhood," Carlberg said. "He did get into trouble. But that was Rodney."

Neighbor Tondalaya Baker, 55, has lived in her home for 13 years and had "never seen any problem" with King.

"He was very private," she said. "He was very quiet. Very withdrawn. The only time we saw him was when he was working in his yard ... or coming and going."

Cory Hudson, who lives just a few blocks away, said King often enjoyed swimming "at all hours of the night."

"I turned on the news and I heard [that King was dead]. Man, it's just devastating," Hudson said, adding the he didn't know any details about the incident.

"It's just sad. I feel bad for all the family members. It's been rough. I mean, he was just getting his life together."

Johnnie Kelley, who said he was King's former bodyguard, came by the house Sunday and consoled King's two daughters outside of the police tape.

"He's a good guy. He's a great guy. He's a kindhearted guy, maybe too kindhearted," he said.

Kelley said he "understood his pain and all the things he was going through — all the drinking and stuff like that" after the beating, police trial and riots.

"After going through a trauma like that, being beaten and still having to deal with the public and everything — and life, period — I can understand what he was going through."



http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/06/rodney-kings-neighbors-describe-unusual-commotion-at-his-house-saturday-night.html