Rodney King was looking to celebrate. It was Saturday night, March 2, 1991, and he

just got in a new job. King was a high school dropout, and it spent time in

prison for arm robbery. He didn't have an easy time finding work.

Well he was turning his life around. He was in the Union doing construction.

That's Johnny Kelly, one of King's best friends. So he had a good thing going.

He was looking forward to that. He loved construction. Johnny Kelly didn't make it

out that night. So King got together with two other friends, Freddie Helms and

Bryant Down. They watched basketball and trained Montlicker, just another

slow evening in Alterdena, a quiet area north of Los Angeles.

Around midnight, King decided he wanted to take his friends to a park. It was a

spot where he used to hang out with his father. So he got behind the wheel of

his four door Hyundai Excel. Helms set shotgun. Allen was in the back seat.

There was still buzzing off their forties. King had it west on Interstate 2-10,

picking up speed as he drove. A few minutes later, the white Hyundai caught the

attention of two California highway patrol officers, a husband and wife team,

Tim and Melanie Singer. That's Tim calling into police dispatch. Melanie was

driving their patrol car. The singers saw King driving erratically,

apparently speeding. They also noted that the two passengers weren't wearing seat

belts. King didn't pull over or even slow down. He exited the freeway and the

singers followed. Soon after, the highway cops were joined by cars from the

Los Angeles Police Department. This was now a chase.

A police helicopter hovered overhead. Melanie Singer caught King's car at 115

...