Figure in Riots Didn’t Kill Man, Attorney Says

Damian Monroe Williams, who served four years in prison for attacking truck driver Reginald Denny during the 1992 Los Angeles riots, “absolutely denies that he had anything to do with” a shooting death in South-Central Los Angeles earlier this week, his lawyer said Thursday.

The attorney, Dean Masserman, said at a news conference outside the Men’s Central Jail where Williams, 27, is being held that what he has learned of an eyewitness account leaves him confident that Williams will be cleared.

Williams surrendered to police Wednesday after a warrant had been issued for his arrest in connection with the fatal shooting of Grover Tinner, 43, in a house in the 1700 block of West Gage Avenue early Tuesday.

Police said witnesses told them that Williams and Tinner argued at the house. As Tinner began to leave, the witnesses said, Williams shot him.

Police found his body in an alley where he had made his way before falling.

However, a woman who spoke to Tinner’s sister, Antoinette, an eyewitness to the incident, said the sister denied that Williams was the gunman. Renee Quells said Antoinette Tinner came to her house Wednesday morning in tears, distraught over her brother’s death.

Quells said Antoinette Tinner told her Williams “didn’t do it. He didn’t do it.”

According to Quells, Antoinette Tinner said Williams was sitting next to her in the house when her brother Grover came in, followed by an unidentified gunman who put a gun to Williams’ head.

Quells said another person in the house said the gunman “looks like Damian.”

David Lynn, an investigator for Williams’ defense, said he also has spoken to Antoinette Tinner, “and what she told me is consistent with the fact that Damian Williams has not been charged with this crime.”

Sgt. John Pasquariello, a Los Angeles Police Department spokesman, said homicide detectives have not interviewed all of the witnesses, and detectives at the department’s 77th Street Division would not say whether they had spoken to Tinner’s sister.

Pasquariello, however, said investigators have physical evidence and testimony from witnesses that point to Williams as a suspect. He said he expects the district attorney’s office to file one count of murder against Williams today.

“There is strong evidence that he committed a crime of murder,” Pasquariello said.

Williams’ mother, Georgiana, said her son did not shoot anyone, but was the victim of an armed assault.

Georgiana Williams said her son had gone to the Gage Avenue address to visit Antoinette Tinner, when a man he did not know came in and held a handgun to his head.

“Damian was able to knock the gun away,” she said, before running from the house.

She said her son was not aware that anyone had been shot until he heard about it the next day. When he heard that he was wanted for murder, he said he had to “go to the police station and tell them I was there but didn’t do anything,” she said.

She said she told him not to go to the station without a lawyer.

“I wish he had not left the crime scene,” she said. “I wish he had called 911 and reported that a man had held a gun on him.”

Williams was convicted in 1993 of the televised assault on Denny at Florence and Normandie avenues in the early hours of the 1992 riots.

After Denny had been dragged from his truck and brutally beaten, television cameras caught Williams as he threw a brick, striking Denny in the head.

Williams was sentenced to eight years in prison and was paroled in December 1997.

Georgiana Williams said he has been harassed by officers from the 77th Street Division since his release on parole. She said police have stopped him several times without arresting or ticketing him.

A Corrections Department official confirmed that Williams had reported such stops to his parole agent. Efforts to reach the commanding officer at the 77th Street Division were unsuccessful.

Although he has not been charged in connection with the murder, Williams is being held without bail for a possible parole violation. A corrections department official said there is no bail when a “parole hold” has been placed on a prisoner.