Reporter on shootout with SLA won award

Henry R. “Hank” Allison III, 64, a former KFWB radio reporter whose coverage of the gun battle between the LAPD and the Symbionese Liberation Army earned national recognition, died Sept. 6 of a blood clot at his Nashville home, the website LARadio.com reported.

Allison was one of four reporters for KFWB-AM (980) to receive a Columbia-DuPont Award for on-the-scene reporting of the May 17, 1974, shootout in South Los Angeles. Their coverage “made five consecutive hours . . . into a single chilling and coherent whole,” the award jury said.

A New Jersey native, Allison moved to Southern California as a boy. After serving in the Army in Vietnam, he wrote for the South Bay Daily Breeze and the Los Angeles Herald Examiner before joining KFWB.

In the mid-1970s, Allison moved to Montesano, Wash., and earned a degree in clinical psychology from Evergreen State College. From 1977 to 1989, he was a television news reporter and anchor in Nashville.

He earned a degree from the Nashville School of Law in 1983 and eventually turned to practicing law in Nashville.