Rodney King, the African-American motorist, whose March 1991
videotaped brutal beating by the Los Angeles police sparked the
worst racial riots in the US history, dies at 47. King's
fiancée, who found his body at the bottom of a swimming pool at
the house in early Sunday, called 911 to report the incident,
police Lt. Dean Hardin said, the Associated Press reported.
Police officers rushed to the scene and pulled King out of the
pool. The unresponsive King was taken to the hospital where, the
police said, he was pronounced dead at 06:11 (13:11 GMT). After
his death, African-American civil rights activist Al Sharpton
stated, "Rodney King was a symbol of civil rights and he
represented the anti-police brutality and anti-racial profiling
movement of our time.” The LA riots started on April 29, 1992
when an all-white Simi Valley jury acquitted four LA Police
Department (LAPD) officers of wrongdoing in King’s beating. Over
the course of six days, the unrest spread quickly throughout the
city and left at least 53 peo