DMV Returns Driver’s License to King : Ruling: There was insufficient evidence that motorist refused to take a blood-alcohol test when arrested on suspicion of drunk driving, a hearing officer says.

Rodney G. King got his driver’s license back Monday, after a Department of Motor Vehicles hearing officer found that there was insufficient evidence that he had refused to take a blood-alcohol test when he was arrested in July on suspicion of drunk driving.

“I am happy, very happy. It will be a thrill for me to drive again,” King said, adding that he looks forward to driving his two sons and wife to Disneyland this week.

The not guilty verdicts in the trial of four Los Angeles police officers charged with beating King sparked the Los Angeles riots, the most destructive civil unrest in the country this century.

After his arrest for driving under the influence, King had argued that he did not understand the request to take the test because his attention was distracted. Last week, he testified before hearing officer Kathleen Anderson that after his arrest, he was upset and confused by a California Highway Patrol officer who started challenging him about the veracity of his report of the March, 1991, beating.

King said he did not comprehend the warning from another officer who was telling him that, under California law, a driver who refuses to take a blood, urine or breath test may have his license automatically suspended.

King’s license was suspended Aug. 30, after a 45-day stay to allow him time to appeal had lapsed.

He received his license back Monday evening at the Santa Ana office of his lawyer, Milton Grimes, just hours after the hearing officer issued her ruling.

King, 27, was arrested in the early morning of July 16 in a parking lot of a Denny’s restaurant in Orange. Officers said King was driving erratically.

But King, in a three-day DMV appeal hearing, argued that he took a field sobriety test and would have taken chemical tests if he had understood that they were being requested.

King denied that he was driving under the influence of alcohol, contending that earlier in the day he had consumed only one beer and part of a second before driving from his home in Los Angeles County to Orange County, where he and his wife were living temporarily in a hotel in an attempt to escape contact with the media.