King Cleared as Suspect in Holdups

State Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren announced Wednesday that there is insufficient evidence to file criminal charges against Rodney G. King in two San Fernando Valley armed robberies that occurred during the weeks before King was beaten by police.

Lungren also acknowledged at a Los Angeles news conference that Los Angeles police officers did not show King’s photograph to robbery witnesses until after his March 3 beating in Lake View Terrace.

Lungren said his staff found no evidence of misconduct by police during their brief investigation of the robberies.

The crimes occurred Jan. 12 at a Domino’s pizzeria in Sylmar, and Feb. 21 at a now-defunct video store in Sun Valley. Both are in the Foothill Division, the same northeast San Fernando Valley patrol area where King was beaten.

“There is no indication whatsoever in our investigation that they in any way selected out his picture or put it in a different category or in any way attempted to influence the identification,” Lungren said of the Los Angeles Police Department’s inclusion of King as a possible suspect in the two robberies.

“We didn’t find anything to suggest it was fishy. I had the same questions as you had going into this,” Lungren said to reporters. “But I didn’t find anything suggestive that this was the case.”

King’s attorney, Steven A. Lerman of Beverly Hills, said Wednesday that he had expected King to be exonerated.

“We believe in our client Mr. King and therefore we have known all along that Mr. King could not have been involved and are only surprised by the length of time it took the attorney general’s office to complete their investigation.”

King, a 25-year-old Altadena resident, was paroled from state prison in January after pleading guilty to robbing a Monterey Park grocery store in November, 1989.

King’s robbery conviction and the fact that he is a 6-foot-3, 225-pound black male, contributed to his becoming a “potential suspect” in the two San Fernando Valley robberies, Los Angeles Police Cmdr. Rick Dinse said Wednesday.

“The reason King was selected is that he very closely fit the description” of the suspect in the Jan. 12 and Feb. 21 robberies, Dinse said. “His size, his unique size, made him a suspect, together with the fact that he was already on parole and was in the general area where they had occurred.”

Dinse, who has been heading the Police Department’s internal investigation into King’s March 3 beating, said the department would accept the attorney general’s findings and continue to investigate the robberies “in the hopes of identifying the culprits.”

About King’s selection as a possible suspect, Dinse said: “I only wished the detectives had touched base with their supervisors a little sooner than they did about their use of King as a suspect.

“But the fact that they came to believe he may be a suspect was not unusual or uncommon. The only thing that makes it difficult is that he’s part of a very notorious incident which received a lot of publicity,” Dinse said.

The Police Department referred the robbery investigations to the attorney general’s office on March 27 to avoid any conflict of interest.

Lungren said one victim, a video store clerk who was shot in the shoulder during the Feb. 21 robbery, identified King about three weeks after seeing him on television.

But state investigators later established that King was at work as a laborer at Dodger Stadium, about 14 miles away, Lungren said. The video store robbery occurred about 1:40 p.m. that Thursday, and King’s boss has told The Times that time cards reflect King was at work until 3:30 p.m., and that he saw King as late as 2 p.m.

Lungren said other witnesses, whom he declined to identify, corroborated the alibi.

In the Jan. 12 pizzeria case, the victim was unable to positively identify King, so state investigators did not bother to determine whether he had an alibi, Lungren said.

“As far as we’re concerned, with respect to our particular investigation, our investigation is now closed,” Lungren said.

Times staff writer Richard A. Serrano contributed to this story