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Attack on Reginald Denny
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. His attackers, a group of black men who came to be known as the "L.A. Four", targeted Denny because he was white. The attack was captured on video by a news helicopter and broadcast live on U.S. national television.
Four other black L.A. residents who had witnessed the attack on live television came to Denny's aid, placing him back in his truck and driving him to the hospital. Denny suffered a fractured skull and impairment of his speech and ability to walk, for which he underwent years of rehabilitative therapy. 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 was born in 1953 in Lansing, Michigan. His parents moved to Sylmar, Los Angeles, when he was a child. At the time of the attack, Denny worked as a truck driver in Los Angeles.
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. The outrage resulting from the acquittal of these police officers was the principal cause of the 1992 Los Angeles riots.
On April 29, 1992, at 5:39 p.m., Denny loaded his red dump truck with 27 short tons (24 t) of sand to be delivered to a plant in Inglewood. On the way, he left the Harbor Freeway and took a familiar shortcut along Florence Avenue. 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 of Florence and Normandie Avenue, 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.
Video footage taken from a helicopter by freelance journalists Zoey Tur (then known as Bob Tur) and Marika Gerrard showed Denny being pulled from his truck and beaten with fists, kicked, and struck with a cinder block before being rescued by four nearby residents. 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. 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.
Antoine Miller climbed up and opened the truck door, giving an unidentified man the chance to pull Denny out and throw him on the ground. 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. 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. 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. After the beating ended, some men threw beer bottles at Denny and a man searched his back pockets, taking his wallet. Tur and Gerrard, observing the beating from their helicopter, reported that there were no police in the area.
Four 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. Green, also a truck driver, boarded Denny's truck and drove him to the Daniel Freeman Hospital in Inglewood. Murphy would later say, "Something inside me said, 'Get up; you have to do something.'" Paramedics who attended to Denny said he suffered major trauma and came very close to dying. Soon after Green took him to the hospital, Denny suffered a seizure. His skull was fractured in 91 places and pushed into his brain. 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. A crater remained in his forehead despite efforts to correct it.
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Attack on Reginald Denny
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. His attackers, a group of black men who came to be known as the "L.A. Four", targeted Denny because he was white. The attack was captured on video by a news helicopter and broadcast live on U.S. national television.
Four other black L.A. residents who had witnessed the attack on live television came to Denny's aid, placing him back in his truck and driving him to the hospital. Denny suffered a fractured skull and impairment of his speech and ability to walk, for which he underwent years of rehabilitative therapy. 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 was born in 1953 in Lansing, Michigan. His parents moved to Sylmar, Los Angeles, when he was a child. At the time of the attack, Denny worked as a truck driver in Los Angeles.
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. The outrage resulting from the acquittal of these police officers was the principal cause of the 1992 Los Angeles riots.
On April 29, 1992, at 5:39 p.m., Denny loaded his red dump truck with 27 short tons (24 t) of sand to be delivered to a plant in Inglewood. On the way, he left the Harbor Freeway and took a familiar shortcut along Florence Avenue. 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 of Florence and Normandie Avenue, 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.
Video footage taken from a helicopter by freelance journalists Zoey Tur (then known as Bob Tur) and Marika Gerrard showed Denny being pulled from his truck and beaten with fists, kicked, and struck with a cinder block before being rescued by four nearby residents. 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. 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.
Antoine Miller climbed up and opened the truck door, giving an unidentified man the chance to pull Denny out and throw him on the ground. 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. 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. 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. After the beating ended, some men threw beer bottles at Denny and a man searched his back pockets, taking his wallet. Tur and Gerrard, observing the beating from their helicopter, reported that there were no police in the area.
Four 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. Green, also a truck driver, boarded Denny's truck and drove him to the Daniel Freeman Hospital in Inglewood. Murphy would later say, "Something inside me said, 'Get up; you have to do something.'" Paramedics who attended to Denny said he suffered major trauma and came very close to dying. Soon after Green took him to the hospital, Denny suffered a seizure. His skull was fractured in 91 places and pushed into his brain. 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. A crater remained in his forehead despite efforts to correct it.