CHP Officers Who Began King Pursuit Tell of Seeing Him Beaten : Trial: One says sight of baton blows and Taser shots ‘overwhelmed’ her. Jury will decide payment of damages.

The two California Highway Patrol officers who initiated the high-speed pursuit that ended in the beating of Rodney G. King testified Friday that King was struck several times in the head by officers wielding metal batons with full-force “power strokes.”

Melanie Singer, who was riding with her husband and partner, Timothy Singer, testified in federal court that she saw King shot twice with a Taser stun gun and hit as many as six times by baton blows from police officers trying to subdue him in Lake View Terrace.

“I was overwhelmed,” said Singer, who added that she was told by Los Angeles Police Sgt. Stacey C. Koon not to enter the fray. “It was happening so fast it caught me off guard.”

King screamed and moaned, she said, as he was struck repeatedly on the head.

Singer was restrained Friday, but during last year’s federal criminal trial, she broke down in tears as she testified that she would never forget watching LAPD Officer Laurence M. Powell repeatedly strike King.

She said then that she considered giving him medical treatment at the scene but did not, out of fear that she would be heckled by the Los Angeles police officers who had beaten him.

Powell and Koon were convicted in that trial of violating King’s civil rights and are serving 30-month prison sentences. Timothy E. Wind and Theodore J. Briseno were acquitted.

In the lawsuit, King is seeking $9.2 million in damages. The city has accepted liability for the injuries King suffered, but it has offered to pay him $1.25 million.

The jury is to determine how much King should be awarded in compensatory damages. In the second phase of the trial, his lawyers are to argue that the individual defendants also should pay King punitive damages.

Singer testified that King continued to ignore police commands to lie still on the ground after the police chase was over. She said it took several commands before he left his car. Then he waved at a helicopter and shook his buttocks at the officers, she said. He was ordered to the ground, but then he resisted handcuffing. When he rose to his feet and advanced upon Koon, she said, he was shot with the Taser.

“His face looked as if it had been electrified,” she said. “Both sides were moving up and down, convulsing.”

The second Taser shot knocked King down, but he continued to resist, keeping his hands in a “push-up” position.

Timothy Singer also testified that he saw King hit six times, and “all of the blows except one, that I can recall, struck him in the head.” After one blow, the officer said he saw King’s jaw “move to the left, appearing to displace.”

Also on Friday, an expert witness brought in by the plaintiffs testified that King probably suffered permanent mental damage from the blows to the head.

Dr. Dilworth Thomas Rogers, a neurosurgeon who examined King on Dec. 30, testified that the blows to King’s head put him at increased risk of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.