officers - The Black Vault

FD-350 (Rev. 5·8·81)
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te page, name of
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(Mount Clipping in Space Below)
The Man Swept Up
in the FurOr -
Friends, Family Say King Was Somet~m~s
Lost but Never Violent
By ASHLEY DUNN and ANDREA FORD
TIMES STAFF WRITERS
Even those who have elevated Rodney
G. King's case to a cause celebre
know little more about the man.
than w?at they saw in a grainy,
homemade v1d~o ~bowing him being
bludgeoned, k1cked and electrically
stunned by Los Angeles police officers.
In his single public appearance after the
incideD;t, a battered and bruised King,
seated m a wheelchair and with one leg in a
cast, seemed bewildered and confused. He
gave only one brief glimpse into his'
personality by noting that he took the·
beating ·~like a man."
_But those who know him say that even if
Kmg were to lay open his life, there would
.be little anyone would call unusual or
extraordinary. The King they describe is a
man who sometimes seemed lost, but who
was never violent or cruel.
His 6-foot-3, 225-pound frame makes
him. an intimidating sight, they said,
but behmd the bulk is a mostly passive
human being, a "Baby Huey," as one friend
described him.
Even King's one brush with crime seems
, typical of the way most of his acquaint­
. .ances characterize him. The Monterey
Park grocer who was robbed by Ki:qg in
November, 1989, said he did not believe
King had the heart to hurt him.
"lie just wanted the money," said Tae
Suck Baik. "I hit him first. If I didn't hit
him, he wouldn't have hit me."
Reporters have bombarded King and his
attorneys with requests for interviews.
PeQple from as far away as Australia have
tried to contact him, some offering to make
donations. ·
But King has remained in seclusion. "He
needs peace and quiet," said Robert Rentzer,
one of King's attorneys. "He needs an
topportunity ,to recover."
. Associated Press
Rodney King, battered and bruised, at
press conference just before his release.
Most family members also have refused
to talk about King or the beating, as have
the two men who were with King at the '
time-Bryant ·Keith Allen and Freddie
Helms.
Nevertheless, some relatives, neighbors
lifelong friends and co-workers describ~
him as an essentially ordinary man caught
in an extraordinary· furor. ·
· ' King was born in Sacramento' but grew
up in in a middle-class neighborhood on the
west s'de of Altadena, surrounaed by
relatives who had begun .migrating to
Southerp. California in the 1960s, said an
uncle, Phil King.
LOS ANGELES TIMES
Date: SUN . , :t-1AR 17 , 1991
Edition:
HETRO SECTION, PAGE 1
Tiiti·THE MAN SWEPT UP IN THE
e. FUROR
Character:
01'
Classification:
CIVIL RIGHTS
80-3 3B
Submitting Office:
LOS ANGELES
lndexin :
SEARCHED'--- INDEXEO, ___ I
SERIAliZED,_...,.,~ fll.m"'-"---1
MAR 2 :Y 1991
His father, who died four years ago, was
a construction worker who sometimes did
maintenance work around town and was a
devout Jehovah's Witness, Phil King said.
At John Muir High School, King was put
in special education classes because of
difficulty with reading, according to teachers
there. They remembered that he played
on the school's baseball team but was not a
standout.
He had no serious behavior problems,
they said, but did have trouble making it to
school every day. None of the teachers
could remember the reason for his truancy.
By his senior year .h~ was at least one
year behind, his teachers said. In 1984, six
month~ before he was scheduled to graduate,
he dropped out, they said.
Cedric Hill, a car salesman who has
.known King since childhood, said King
seemed to drift after dropping out. "All-the
Kings are really good people at heart," he ·.
said, "but Rodney at that time was running '
··around, hanging out, being youthful."
The crowd Rodney ran with, Hill said,
were not criminals, as far as he knew.
"Singing on the corner, hanging out at the
park," he said. .
_King and his wife, Crystal Waters, a
friend from high school, live on Lincoln
Avenue with her two young sons. Neighbors
said that the couple never caused
trouble or drew a~tention to themselves.
"They are always very polite," said Tony
Fernandez, who lives next door. ~· ·
FBI/OOJ