Damian Williams, sentenced to a maximum term of 10 years in prison for his part in the attack on Reginald Denny and other riot victims, did not know what sparked the riots, according to a report published Wednesday.
Williams, a black man whose beating of Denny, a white truck driver, came to symbolize the violence of last year's Los Angeles riots, said he did not know they were caused by the acquittal of four white police officers in the beating of a black motorist."I was just caught up in the rapture. Maybe other people knew about it (the verdicts) but I wasn't aware of it until later," Williams told the Wave Newspaper Group, which published the interview in its nine Los Angeles area weekly newspapers.
The riots led to the deaths of 54 people and caused $1 billion in property damage. They followed hours after a state court acquittal in April 1992 of four white police officers in the videotaped beating of black motorist Rodney King 13 months earlier.
The attack on Denny, at the junction of Florence and Normandie avenues in south central Los Angeles, began within an hour of the April 29, 1992, not-guilty police verdicts.
It had been assumed by public, press and the judicial system that the rioters were responding to the verdicts.
But Williams and fellow defendant Antoine Miller, who was sentenced last week to 27 months probation for his part in the riots, said they just joined in without knowing the cause.
"People were just out of control, wild, like a pack of rats running after cheese. I was taken in by the heat of the moment," Williams said in the interview from his jail cell before the sentencing.
Miller said in the interview he did not know about the police verdicts until two weeks later.
Williams said of the scene where the riots began, "One moment everything was quiet and cool. The next moment south central (Los Angeles) was on fire. It was horrifying, but it made me hysterical and I joined in wrecking things."