A gas station attendant became Tuesday the first witness to positively identify the accused leader of a mob that attacked a truck driver at the start of last year's Los Angeles riots.
Asked who threw a brick at truck driver Reginald Denny, Gabriel Quintana pointed to defendant Damian Williams.Previous medical witnesses have testified that the brick crushed Denny's skull, leaving permanent damage in the form of memory loss and migraine headaches.
Speaking at times through an interpreter, Quintana, 22, said he had seen Williams many times hanging around the Unocal gas station at the corner of Florence and Normandie Avenues, the flashpoint of the riots.
He said that early in the afternoon of April 29, the day the riots started, Williams came up to him and said "Today, I'm gonna get and kill people."
Williams, 22, and Henry Watson, 28, are charged with assault and attempted murder in the attack on Denny and seven other people in unrelated incidents April 29.
Williams is also charged with aggravated mayhem over the brick throwing. If found guilty on all counts the pair faces life in prison.
The riots, in which 53 people were killed, were sparked by the acquittal of four white police officers by a state jury over the notorious beating of black motorist Rodney King.
The officers were subsequently tried in federal court and two were found guilty of violating King's civil rights and sentenced to 21/2 years in prison. They are due to start serving their sentences Sept. 27.
The Denny case is seen as the flip side of the King case, in that Denny is white and his alleged attackers are black.