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Busting bad dish!

Rodney King Found Dead at 47 (DETAILS)

Truth rating: 10

(ABC)

Rodney King , the motorist who was videotaped two decades ago by a bystander as Los Angeles police officers severely beat him during an arrest, is dead.

He was found by his fiancee, Cynthia Kelly, at the bottom of a pool in Rialto, California, at about 5:25 a.m. PST, said Capt. Randy DeAnda.

Police attempted CPR, but he was pronounced dead at a local hospital shortly after 6 a.m. PST, added Capt. DeAnda.

There were no obvious signs of foul play. The police are conducting a drowning investigation.

Kelly told friends that in the hours leading up to her fiancee’s drowning, King had been drinking and smoking pot, says TMZ.

In March 1991, King was infamously kicked and hit 56 times with police batons and tasered. Footage of the beating (video below) and the later acquittal of the officers involved led to the Los Angeles riots.

King, who struggled with alcoholism, appeared in later years both on “Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew” and “Sober House.”

King was 47.

Gossip Cop will update as more details emerge.

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  • Anonymous

    You left a mark here man. I hope you do better on the other side.

  • http://www.fitsavers.com/ Aliaton

    King, who struggled with alcoholism, appeared in later years both on “Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew” and “Sober House.”

  • Dale Hogue

    King’s action was not responsible for the Los Angeles riots. Frankly, neither were the cops who beat him senseless. Neither was the court verdict finding the cops not guilty. Then who or what was responsible? I shouldn’t even have to give you my answer to that question. You’ve got brain cells and the ability to observe various actions that may create physical encounters resulting in death for some participants and bodily injury for others who are just a little bit more fortunate.

    Let me put it this way: there is an idiotic element in any community that is happiest when it can go rambo, berserk, bonkers, crazy, frenzied, maniacal and insane believing that most, if not all, of the participants stand an 80 to 90 per cent chance of never been subjected to any legal ramifications that may realistically take place as a result of this type of militant behavior. And, for a reason you already know, most of these idiotic elements — like a cancer — dwell in the poorer neighborhoods that house poorly educated blacks and brown young men filled to the brim with their inflammable testosterone! It didn’t take much to set the whole community afire.

    At the corner of a busy south Los Angles intersection the white driver of a large truck encountered black youths shouting at him and throwing objects at his cab. When he got out of his truck cab to check for damage he was attacked and nearly killed. Kevin Starr wrote in the Los Angeles Times: “In the city of Angels, a brick smashes a skull and a thug does a dance of joy over an innocent man who is left broken and bleeding.”

    Dale Hogue wrote: “Some people believe this is no aberration, it’s how things should be done in this nation. When justice appears this way in their mind, they only feel they’re repaying in kind. It’s a perverse system that works for those whose sense of justice has only become concerned with nothing but color of skin, not by actions or character within. This depicable game takes its toll as perfidious thinking gains control of those misfits who deal out bloody hates and fears that cause good citizens to shed their tears. Television earned the devil’s pay reporting the carnage of that day as ruthless gangsters played this deadly game. Cowardly twisted minds never learned that the civilized world will always turn on degenerate hoodlums small and large when law and order have taken charge. It’s a very stupid game they play.”

  • Anonymous

    May Rodney King RIP in Heaven with the LORD, To coin a phrase from another King, namely Martin Luther King, Rodney King is free at last from his demons. “There was no obvious signs of foul play” I wonder if King committed suicide. OTOH not presuming he killed himself. I don’t want to jump to conclusions,

  • TMZ – is not the law

    His fiance shouldn’t be telling TMZ anything. That’s the LAPD job. That ole stupid looking man on TMZ is always where he doesn’t belong. Who the heck does he think he is? He is no investigator by law. People shouldn’t tell him anything.

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