Figure in Trucker’s Beating Sentenced for Parole Violation

With only one month of probation left to serve for his part in the beating of trucker Reginald O. Denny during the 1992 riots, Henry Keith Watson has been sentenced to seven years in prison as the result of a run-in with police in June.

Superior Court Judge John W. Ouderkirk, who presided over the Denny case and sentenced Watson in 1993, found him guilty on Dec. 2 of violating a condition of his five-year probationary sentence, which was to have ended in January, authorities said.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Eleanor Hunter said Watson had been arrested six months ago by Los Angeles police after they caught him drinking in the South-Central Los Angeles front yard of the mother of his former co-defendant, Damien Williams, who is serving a 10-year prison term.

Hunter said that when Watson loudly refused to sign his citation for public drunkenness, insisting he was not drunk, the officers arrested him. When he was taken out of the car, “they found cocaine where he had been seated,” she said. Drug possession constituted a violation of Watson’s probation.

Georgiana Williams, who vehemently supported Watson and her son during their trial, said Watson was neither drunk nor on drugs when police pulled up in a squad car. She said officers searched Watson three times on her front porch and found no contraband.

She said police have routinely scrutinized her home. “They’re over here all the time, harassing people,” she said.

Watson’s lawyer, William A. Lorden, said his client had just gotten off work from his job as a limousine driver when the incident occurred.