Local News in Brief : Blind Man Didn’t Kill Transient, Ruling Says
Los Angeles County coroner’s officials say that a transient who attacked a legally blind Valley College student on Christmas Eve died from natural causes and not from the blows of the student who hit the man on the head with a rock during the assault.
Coroner’s spokesman Bill Gold said the transient, Benjie J. Nightingale, 21, died from “respiratory insufficiency combined with severe liver disease.” Police originally said the man apparently was killed when Apolinar Rondina, 20, struggled to defend himself after Nightingale grabbed him as he walked along the railroad tracks in North Hollywood.
Gold said Nightingale’s physical condition was aggravated in the “stressful situation, and that condition could have killed him.”
He said Nightingale did have bruises around his face where Rondina struck him, but that those blows did not contribute to his death.
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