The
man whose videotaped police beating raised a maelstrom of heated debate
about racial tension and police brutality in the early ‘90s finds
himself the victim of another attack.
Rodney
Glen King – the 42-year-old former taxicab driver whose videotaped
beating by four white LAPD officers in 1991 led to deadly mass-rioting
after his aggressors were acquitted – was involved in a new media
circus Thursday after telling authorities he was sprayed with pellets
from a shotgun.
In
his report, King mentioned he was shot late Wednesday night while
biking near the border of San Bernardino and Rialto, regarded as a
particularly dangerous area about 55 miles east of Los Angeles.
Upon arriving at his Jackson Street home in Rialto, roughly a mile from the scene of the incident, King contacted police.
Rialto
police, the first to respond, reportedly found King and others
intoxicated when they arrived at his residence. According to
authorities, King was uncooperative in providing information about the
shooting, resulting in police’s difficulty to decipher what had
happened.
"We
sent a couple of officers out to his address here in Rialto, but he
didn't really tell us a whole lot other than he'd been shot," Rialto
Police Sergeant Don Lewis told reporters. "It looked like birdshot,
looked like a long-distance shot."
Police
said King suffered pellet wounds on his face, arms, back and torso,
though his injuries were reported as non-life-threatening. As of
Thursday afternoon, King was being treated at the Arrowhead Regional
Medical Center in Colton.
On
Thursday morning, San Bernardino Police Lieutenant Scott Paterson told
reporters police were still trying to determine what "was factual." The
shooting may have involved a domestic dispute, he said.
When
investigators interviewed King at the hospital on Thursday afternoon,
he reported that he was shot in the shoulder after riding away from a
man and a woman who demanded his bicycle.
Paterson reportedly said King offered few details about the suspects. "We are hoping somebody witnessed the incident," he said.
As of Thursday, police are still working on the case.
Following
the 1992 Los Angeles riots – an uprising which left 55 dead and
resulted in property damage totaling $1 billion – King was awarded $3.8
million in a civil case, an amount he partially invested in a hip hop
music label.
Renowned
for his insistence on peace and “Can we all get along?” plea to end the
riots, King repeatedly expressed his desire to make a positive impact
on the California community through lectures and demonstrations against
police abuse and racial discrimination.
Interwoven
with these efforts, however, are multiple run-ins with the law,
including a 120-day jail sentence in 2004 for driving under the
influence of the drug PCP and losing control of his vehicle and a
September 2005 arrest over a domestic dispute.
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