Upset and Unglued, King Stays Behind a Locked Door

Stunned, speechless and shaking, Rodney G. King retreated late in the afternoon to the solitude of his bedroom.

On the television screen, the four Los Angeles police officers accused of beating him had just been found not guilty. They were hugging and smiling in the courtroom. But King, the 26-year-old Altadena motorist whose life took a dramatic turn on a midnight drive in the San Fernando Valley 14 months ago, locked himself inside his bedroom.

The lights were turned off; the television was down low. Through the doorjamb, his occasional screams could be heard. “Why? Why? Why?” he groaned. “Why are they beating me again?”

As night came, and rioters and looters spread mayhem on city streets, King still refused to come out of the bedroom, according to recollections Thursday from relatives, friends and members of King’s growing legal entourage.

By 10 p.m., a psychiatrist was called in. The therapist administered an antidepressant and tried to coax King out of his sinking state.

King has repeatedly declined to be interviewed since his beating, and he maintained that silence Thursday. But the doctor who spent four hours with him Wednesday night and finally emerged from the small room with him gave this assessment:

King feels as though he is being pulled apart by forces he can no longer control.

He is extremely angry that he was never called to the witness stand during the officers’ trial in Simi Valley to tell his version of how the officers beat and shot him with an electric stun gun at the end of a high-speed car pursuit.

He is confused and bewildered about the rioting sparked by Wednesday’s verdicts and during which his name frequently is chanted. But he is afraid to speak out publicly against the ugliness, fearful that his words might be misinterpreted and only further ignite the protests.

He is upset that his personal life has been forever changed. And he is dismayed that for the past year he has lived incognito, moving from apartment to apartment around Southern California, rarely able to attend a movie or a sporting event.

King sold the rights for his story to movie producers, but his contract fee was small. He relies on the generosity of relatives who contribute to a fund administered by his attorney.

Even his massive federal civil rights lawsuit against the city, once considered a sure win because of the videotape of his beating, could be in jeopardy, if the verdicts in the criminal trial are an indication of what lies ahead.

“He’s upset and he’s angry and he’s very disappointed,” said Angela King, his aunt and one of his closest family members, who sat through almost every day of the three-month trial. “He’s got enough headaches and heartaches for any one man to bear.”

“Right now, the guy’s completely unglued,” said his attorney, Steve Lerman. “I got a client who’s on the edge of his seat. He’s trying desperately to hold onto his sanity.”

Said a third confidante, who was with King on Wednesday night as news of the verdicts continued to wash over his emotions: “He’s got so many people pulling at him in so many directions he doesn’t know what to expect next.”

Life was not always like this.

Three months before the beating, King had been released from prison and returned to his wife and family. He took a job working at Dodger Stadium. He renewed old acquaintances, two of whom rode with him shortly after midnight on March 3, 1991, on a trip intended to take them to Hansen Dam. They never made it.

Instead, King was tracked speeding on Interstate 210. He was chased by police to a Lake View Terrace neighborhood, where an amateur cameraman caught on film the images of King rolling on the ground under a flurry of police baton blows and kicks.

If King had been called to testify in the trial, his relatives and friends say, he would have told the 12 jurors--none of them black--that not only did the officers beat and kick him, but they hurled racial epithets at him, a charge he made during a talk with prosecutors last year.

He would have testified that he was trying to get up off the ground and flee, to get out from under the 56 baton swings directed at him, that he was not combative or resisting arrest, as three of the officers said in court.

But prosecutors made a decision not to bring King into the courtroom. After the verdicts, Deputy Dist. Atty. Terry White said he did not want to switch the focus of the trial from the defendants to King.

Defense attorneys also were reluctant to put King on the stand, concerned that he would come off as a sympathetic victim. He almost got his chance in the trial’s waning weeks when Paul DePasquale, who represented Officer Timothy E. Wind, decided to call him. But several subpoenas went unserved because defense investigators were unable to locate King.

In the months after the beating, King was moved to new locations around the city. Concerned that he was unsafe in his Altadena home, he was given new quarters, supported by his relatives and money from his attorney, Lerman.

He kept his 7-year-old car with the 85,000 miles on it, but also has been provided newer model vehicles, asking for a different one when he tired of the color.

He strengthened his ties with his large family, including in-laws and cousins, some of whom he had little contact with before the beating.

“He’s got a rather large, extended family who since this incident seems to have taken a higher profile in his life,” Lerman said. “But he loves his family and all his cousins and in-laws.”

Most of his days before the trial were spent watching television, particularly the Discovery Channel and shows about animals. But once the trial started, he became fixed on the screen, watching the proceedings live each day.

During the prosecution’s case, as they brought in witnesses and evidence indicating that King was struck unnecessarily in the head, he began to relax. He began to feel enough peace and inner strength to finally stop smoking.

But then the defense attorneys took their turn before the jury, and three of the accused officers took the stand to defend themselves. Believing in his heart that they were lying, King began feeling low, concerned that without his testimony to refute the officers, the jurors would side with them.

Lerman, trying to bolster his client’s spirits, took him out to dinner one night at a Benihana restaurant in West Los Angeles, where the Japanese chefs prepare the meals at the tables.

“He was kind of nervous because he’d never been to one of these restaurants before,” the lawyer said.

Later, as he was being driven home, he decided he wanted a pizza, so they picked up a carry-out. A large man, muscular and well-built, he ate the whole thing. He seemed to be feeling better.

And then, Wednesday afternoon.

Wearing shorts--his injured right leg still wrapped in an athletic support brace--King watched the verdicts unfold on television. Stunned as they were read by the court clerk, he instinctively reached for a pack of Marlboro Lights.

“He wasn’t talking in clear sentences,” said one friend. “He wasn’t coherent. He wasn’t talking in full sentences.

“It suddenly was like he had no idea who he was or what time it was or where he was. He would start to make sense, and then 10 seconds later he couldn’t even tell you what room he was in. Then he went in the bedroom.”

Thursday morning, he called his aunt. They talked about how the King family was besieged by requests for him to speak out publicly against the rioting, but also about how he cannot bring himself to do so.

“He’s upset and he’s angry and he can’t understand why people are out there running in the streets,” she said. “But you can’t use his name as the excuse for all that’s happening in the city now. And you can’t use his name as the salvation.”