Activist Celes King Robbed, Badly Beaten : Crime: The 70-year-old former NAACP leader, attacked in the Wilshire district, is reported in serious condition.

Celes King III, a prominent activist and businessman in the Los Angeles black community, was in serious condition at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center on Thursday after he was beaten and robbed in the Wilshire district, police said.

The 70-year-old bail bondsman--former president of the Los Angeles Human Relations Commission and the Los Angeles chapter of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People--suffered severe head injuries and other wounds in the pre-dawn attack, said Adelaida De la Cerda, a spokeswoman for the hospital.

Citing their continuing investigation, police provided few details about the incident, saying only that King was attacked somewhere between his home in the Country Club Park area and the corner of 3rd Street and Ardmore Avenue--a distance of about two miles.

Police declined to say whether King was in his car when the assailant--described as a black man in his 30s, armed with a handgun--approached him about 2:45 a.m. Officers refused to say whether the man used his fists or a weapon in the attack, but a doctor’s description of the injuries suggested that some sort of sharp weapon may have been used.

The man fled with an undetermined amount of cash, detectives said. King summoned a cab at 3rd and Ardmore and had the driver take him to his bail bond office on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. Members of his staff said he went directly to a home behind his office, and the woman who lives there summoned police and paramedics. The paramedics took King to the hospital.

King’s physician, Dr. James Mays, said the bail bondsman suffered at least two puncture wounds--one to the shoulder and the other to the neck or to the side of his face.

Mays said King also suffered a concussion from “a tremendous blunt-force trauma to his head. We don’t know how long he was unconscious.”

X-rays show no bullet wounds, Mays said, but several bones in King’s right hand are broken. King’s brain scan appeared normal, but it is too early to say whether he will have a full recovery because of his age, the physician said.

King’s office on King Boulevard is connected to offices of the state Congress on Racial Equality, which King heads. CORE volunteer Dennis Schatzman said Thursday that many of King’s associates have been concerned for some time about his safety.

“He was often out late at night,” said Schatzman, a staff writer for the Los Angeles Sentinel, a weekly newspaper. “It’s the nature of the (bail bond) business.”

Mays said King’s family and friends believe he could have been trying to lead his assailant away from his home when he was assaulted.

Schatzman said a contractor working on King’s offices reported recently that he had seen a suspicious-looking man, apparently casing the office or checking on King’s movements.

Staffers in King’s office and other business people in the neighborhood said King was known to regularly carry large amounts of cash, up to $5,000. They also mentioned that he carried a pistol.

The heavyset bail bondsman made no secret of being armed, writing in a recent essay, “I carry a Smith & Wesson .38-caliber Model 60 revolver.”

In another essay, published last year, King wrote that with “crime in L.A. at an all-time high . . . Los Angeles is in a crisis situation.” Arguing for a larger police force here, he added, “Increasing security in the Southland is a must.”

Sheila Randle, a family friend, said she thought the attack on King “was a random robbery.”

“You have to keep in mind the element he works with,” she said. “But none of his clients he has bailed out of jail would harm him.”

King, a longtime Republican Party activist in the African American community, had been at a reception for Gov. Pete Wilson on Wednesday, Schatzman said. The bail bondsman’s movements were difficult to trace after that, the CORE volunteer said. King was seen in his office late Wednesday night, but it was unknown how long he remained, Schatzman said.

The attack on King came two days before the 9th annual parade here honoring Martin Luther King Jr. The event, founded by King, had been scheduled for January but was postponed because of the Jan. 17 earthquake.