George Holliday The First To Record A Viral Video

2024 Author: Steven Freeman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 08:15

It was in 1991 in front of his house in North Los Angeles - in the same place where the Terminator scene was shot in which Arnold Schwarzenegger took the clothes off a gang member - that George Holliday recorded with his 8-millimeter camera the tremendous beating that Police officers gave him Rodney King, an African American who became a symbol of racial confrontation in the United States.

It was at dawn when the sound of a helicopter woke Holliday up; He got up and started recording the video as soon as he saw the police. At that very moment, without knowing it, he became the first man to reveal the brutality of the police against blacks. "At the time I thought, 'What did this guy do to deserve that,'" Holliday told the El País newspaper.

King was drunk when he was detained by four police officers who took him out of the vehicle, shot him with an electric pistol and beat him up.

Days after the events happened, Holliday decided to call the police station. Not receiving a positive response, she called the local Los Angeles television station KTLA, where they did broadcast the recording. "The phone exploded. Everyone wanted an interview and a copy of the tape, "said Holliday, who speaks Buenos Aires Spanish, having lived with her parents for years in Argentina. "I had to disconnect the phone."

Four white officers went to trial for the assault; however, on April 29, 1992, they were acquitted by a jury of white citizens. That afternoon, riots began in south Los Angeles that left 55 people dead, more than 2,000 people injured and various parts of the city burned to ashes.

On any given day, when he was loading gas, someone yelled at him. "Hey George Holliday, do you know who I am?" Said Holliday who did not recognize Rodney King at the time. "He said, 'You saved my life.' I did not know to say. We shook hands and said goodbye."

In a legal process following the acquittal verdict for the police officers, King filed a civil lawsuit against the City of Los Angeles and ended up receiving millionaire compensation.

King died ten years later: his body was found in the pool at his home. Decades after the riots, King was detained for drug and alcohol-related offenses and domestic violence.