The beating of Rodney King 20 years ago Thursday marked the end of a 100-mph car chase and the beginning of a chain of events that would forever change Los Angeles, its police department and the racial conversation in the United States.
King, then a 25-year-old convicted robber on parole, admittedly had a few drinks under his belt as he headed home from a friend's house.
When he spotted a police car following him, he panicked, thinking he would be sent back to prison.
So he took off.
"I had a job to go to that Monday, and I knew I was on parole, and I knew I wasn't supposed to be drinking, and I'm like, 'Oh my God,' " King told CNN in a recent interview.
Realizing he couldn't outrun police but knowing what they were likely to do to him when they caught him, King said he looked for a public place to stop.
"I saw all those apartments over there, so I said, 'I'm gonna stop right there. If it goes down, somebody will see it.' "
It did go down.
Four police officers, all of them white, struck King more than 50 times with their wood batons and shocked him with an electric stun gun.
" 'We are going to kill you, n****r,' " King said police shouted as they beat him. The officers denied using racial slurs.
King was right in his expectation of a beating, but his hope of having a witness was fulfilled in a big way.
Not only did somebody see it, somebody videotaped it -- still a novelty in 1991, before people had cell phone cameras.
The video showed a large lump of a man floundering on the ground, surrounded by a dozen or more police officers, four of whom were beating him relentlessly with nightsticks.
One officer's swings slow down as he appears worn out by his nonstop flailing. King was beaten nearly to death. Three surgeons operated on him for five hours that morning.
The dramatic video of the episode appeared on national TV two days later. At last, blacks in L.A. -- and no doubt in other parts of the country -- had evidence to document the police brutality many had known but most of America had always denied or tolerated.
"We finally caught the Loch Ness Monster with a camcorder," King attorney Milton Grimes said.
Four LAPD officers -- Theodore Briseno, Laurence Powell, Timothy Wind and Sgt. Stacey Koon -- were indicted on charges of assault with a deadly weapon and excessive use of force by a police officer.
