Rescuers Describe Saving Beaten and Bloody Denny : Trial: The four rushed to riot intersection after seeing attack on TV. One drove victim to hospital in his truck.

A black trucker who went to Reginald O. Denny’s aid as rioting broke out in Los Angeles last year testified Thursday that he felt as if he had been beaten himself when he saw the attack on Denny.

“It felt like I was getting hurt,” Bobby Green said. “I thought he might die. I went to help.”

Green was one of four good Samaritans who described Thursday how they helped rescue Denny, a white truck driver, from Florence and Normandie avenues, where he was beaten in the early hours of the riots.

The rescuers, all African-Americans who saw the beating on television, also included registered dietitian Lei Yuille, engineer Titus Murphy and his friend Terri Barnett.

They portrayed a harrowing scene as they took the gravely injured Denny to Daniel Freeman Memorial Hospital in Inglewood.

Damian Monroe Williams, 20, and Henry Keith Watson, 28, are charged with attempting to murder Denny, and with assaulting or robbing five other motorists and two firefighters as they passed through the intersection April 29, 1992.

In her testimony Thursday, Yuille said she and her brother were watching live television shots from a helicopter hovering over the intersection when her brother told her: “We’re Christians. We need to go to help.”

Murphy, Barnett and Barnett’s 8-year-old daughter were watching the same scenes when they decided that they should offer to help, Murphy testified.

Yuille, 38, apparently arrived first at the truck that Denny was driving, which by now had slowly moved west about a block past Normandie. Denny, despite his beating, had managed to get back behind the wheel.

Yuille said she left her brother, ran across the street and jumped on the passenger-side running board of the truck. Denny was very bloody with obvious bruises on the right side of his face, she said.

“I told him I was there to help,” she said. “He said he couldn’t see, and I told him I would guide him.”

Meanwhile, Murphy and Barnett arrived with the 8-year-old in the car. Murphy pulled in front of the slowly moving truck and ran back to check on Denny, he said.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Janet Moore, one of two prosecutors, asked Murphy why he went to help.

“Why not?” he said. “From what we saw on television, we thought he needed help.”

Murphy said he ran back to the passenger-side running board where Yuille was standing and realized that Denny was seriously injured. Murphy said he ran back to the car, now with Barnett behind the wheel, to tell her that he was going to try to drive the truck.

Murphy said he saw a large black man running toward the truck and “didn’t know if he was going to finish off (Denny) or not.” He said his main concern was to protect Denny from further harm.

The man running toward the truck turned out to be Green, who persuaded Denny to move over and let him take the wheel, Murphy said. With Green behind the wheel, and Yuille inside the cab trying to comfort Denny, the truck moved away slowly as Murphy remained on the running board, the witnesses said.

Barnett, with her daughter in the back seat, drove ahead in her Honda Civic with her emergency flashers on.

“I guess you could call it interference,” she said of her role. “I was trying to get them through the traffic.”

The group had earlier decided to head to nearby Daniel Freeman hospital. The truck, with its horn blaring, headed west on Florence at up to 55 m.p.h., Green said.

Barnett said she blocked traffic at Prairie Avenue and Florence to let the 80,000-pound truck make a left turn toward the hospital.

Murphy testified that he had a hard time holding on, and that his foot once slipped off the running board and he had to pull himself back. He was not injured, he said.

During the 10- to 15-minute drive, he said, Denny was “mainly just hanging in there. He was not really conscious that much. He was going in and out of consciousness.”

The truck, with two trailers loaded with gravel, pulled into the hospital’s emergency entrance where Denny went into convulsions before paramedics took him inside for treatment, Green said.

Denny’s face was so swollen, Barnett said, “it seemed that he didn’t have a nose.”

On cross-examination, the rescuers said they saw at least one Los Angeles police car on the way to the hospital. But they said the car did not stop when they tried to flag it down.

In response to questions from Williams’ attorney, Edi M. O. Faal, Green said no one was controlling activities at Florence and Normandie--that people were not acting in accordance with a plan. Had there been police officers at the scene, he said, he would not have felt the need to intervene.

None of the rescuers could identify any of the people who attacked Denny.

After the noon break, Dr. Paul Toffel, who performed reconstructive surgery on Denny, said the trucker had a large depressed skull fracture on the right side of his head and 90 to 100 fractures in his face. Using three-dimensional photos taken from CAT scans, diagrams and a model of Denny’s skull, Toffel described how surgery to remove a blood clot had to be performed to save Denny’s life.

Denny’s left eye had dropped three-quarters of an inch behind the cheekbone, Toffel said. A piece of plastic the size of a quarter has to be used to hold the eyeball in place, he said. An emergency operation had to be performed to place a breathing tube in Denny’s throat because the trucker was in a coma and strangling on his tongue, Toffel said.

Denny later developed blood clots in a leg and in his lungs as a result of injures he suffered in the assault, Toffel said.

Before Toffel could complete his testimony Thursday, the trial was recessed early because Williams was reported suffering from nausea and a headache.

Former Hawthorne Police Sgt. Don Jackson, a spokesman for the Williams family, said outside court that Williams did not eat breakfast or lunch Thursday.

Outside court, Georgiana Williams, Damian Williams’ mother, said she was “100%” supportive of the good Samaritans: “It was the greatest thing that ever happened.,” she said.

During a break in testimony Wednesday, Denny embraced Georgiana Williams and Joyce Watson, the defendants’ mothers. Appearing on the television show “Inside Edition” on Thursday, Denny said he had thought he would be afraid when he saw his alleged attackers in court.

“But when I saw them sitting there, they are not the bad guys they probably appear to be on the street,” Denny said. “They’re just two guys sitting there. One-on-one, they’re no tougher than anybody else. They’re just guys and, unfortunately, the circumstances under which we met were not pleasant.”

No testimony will be heard in the trial today because a juror was excused to keep a medical appointment. The trial resumes Monday.