![]() A permanent crater remains in his forehead despite efforts to correct it. His left eye was so badly dislocated that it would have fallen into his sinus cavity had the surgeons not replaced the crushed bone with a piece of plastic. His skull was fractured in 91 places and pushed into his brain. Soon after Green took him to the hospital, Denny suffered a seizure. Paramedics who attended to Denny said he suffered major trauma and came very close to dying. Green, also a truck driver, boarded Denny's truck and drove him to the Daniel Freeman Hospital in Inglewood. įour Black residents of South Central Los Angeles, Bobby Green Jr., Lei Yuille, Titus Murphy, and Terri Barnett, who had been watching the events on television, came to Denny's aid. Tur and Gerrard reported that there was no police presence in the area. After the beating ended, some men threw beer bottles at the unconscious body and a man searched Denny's back pockets, taking his wallet. News footage showed Damian Williams throwing a cinder block at Denny's head, then doing a football-style victory dance in the road and gesticulating gang signs at the Los Angeles News Service helicopter of Zoey Tur and Marika Gerrard. As Watson walked away, two other unidentified men joined in the attack: one hurled a five-pound oxygenator stolen from Larry Tarvin's truck at Denny's head, and the other kicked him and hit him with a claw hammer. Henry Watson stood on Denny's neck to hold him down as a group of men surrounded him and Anthony Brown kicked him in the abdomen. ![]() Īntoine Miller climbed up and opened the truck door, giving an unidentified man the chance to pull Denny out and throw him on the ground. The attack has been described as a hate crime in which Denny, a White man, was targeted for his race in response to police brutality against King and the belief that the criminal justice system had failed to protect King’s civil rights. Timothy Goldman, a local resident who was filming on the ground at the corner of Florence and Normandie Avenues, captured a part of the scene. riots, video footage from the Los Angeles News Service helicopter showed Denny being pulled from his truck and beaten with fists, kicked, and struck with a cinder block during the first day of rioting. In what has been called an "iconic image" of the L.A. Attack ĭamian Williams throwing a cinder block at Denny's head, then executing a football-style victory dance. He was listening to the radio, "probably KKLA, a Christian channel," Denny said, "or country station KZLA." At 6:46 p.m., after he entered the intersection at Normandie, rioters threw rocks at his windows, and he heard people shouting for him to stop, forcing him to do so in the middle of the street. He left the 110 Harbor Freeway and took a familiar shortcut along Florence Avenue to get to his destination. On April 29, 1992, at 5:39 p.m., Denny loaded his red dump truck with 27 short tons (24 t) of sand and began driving to a plant in Inglewood, where the sand was due. His parents moved to Sylmar, Los Angeles, when he was a child. īorn in 1953 in Lansing, Michigan, Reginald Oliver Denny was a 39-year-old truck driver at the time of the attack. The outrage resulting from the acquittal of these police officers was the principal cause of the 1992 Los Angeles riots. On March 3, 1991, an amateur video recording showed Rodney King, a Black motorist, being badly beaten by Los Angeles Police Department officers during an arrest. ![]() Main articles: Rodney King and 1992 Los Angeles riots After unsuccessfully suing the City of Los Angeles, Denny moved to Arizona, where he worked as an independent boat mechanic and has mostly avoided media contact. Denny suffered a fractured skull and impairment of his speech and his ability to walk, for which he underwent years of rehabilitative therapy. residents who had been witnessing the attack on live television came to Denny's aid, placing him back in his truck and driving him to the hospital. national television.įour other Black L.A. The attack was captured on video by a news helicopter and broadcast live on U.S. Four", targeted Denny because he was White. ![]() His attackers, a group of Black men who came to be known as the " L.A. Reginald Oliver Denny (born 1953) is a former construction truck driver who was pulled from his truck and severely beaten during the 1992 Los Angeles riots.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |