TV Reporter Implicates Defendants in Denny Beating

By JIM NEWTON

Aug. 4, 1992 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

A television newsman whose reports accompanied live footage of the April 29 rioting at Florence and Normandie avenues on Monday identified three defendants charged with beating motorists that day, and said he had seen two of them assault truck driver Reginald O. Denny.

Robert A. Tur, whose reports of the violence were aired by KCOP Channel 13, said he was hovering directly over the intersection in a helicopter when a group of attackers, including Damian Monroe (Football) Williams and Henry Keith (Kiki) Watson, beat “that trucker senseless.”

Tur also testified that he saw Williams and Watson attack other motorists. Watson, for instance, helped pummel trucker Larry Tarvan “in a very violent, disgusting and inhumane way,” Tur said.

A third defendant in the attacks, Antoine Eugene Miller, opened the door of Denny’s truck but never hit him and “was not as violent as the others,” Tur added.

Tur’s testimony, which came on the second day of a highly charged preliminary hearing, marks the first time that an eyewitness has identified the suspects.

Defense attorneys objected repeatedly during his account, which lasted for several hours.

The judge overruled most of their objections. Tur said Williams and Watson had looked up at the helicopter. He said that he remembered both of their faces.

After the beating, Tur said, Williams and another man celebrated. “It appeared to me that they seemed to take a lot of pride in a job well done,” he said.

Tur conceded that he had already made up his mind about much of the case, and said in response to a question that he would like to see Miller go to prison. Afterward, defense lawyers said those remarks indicated that Tur was biased and that his testimony is therefore not believable.

Williams’ lawyers said outside the courtroom that Tur had lied about whether Williams was wearing sunglasses at the time of the attack on Denny. In his testimony, Tur at first said Williams was not wearing glasses during that attack.

But after he was shown a photograph of the man whom prosecutors say is Williams, Tur said he thought the question had been about another attack at the same intersection.

Although lawyers for Williams and Watson sought to discredit Tur, his testimony helped the case of Miller, whose attorneys have always acknowledged that he was at the scene and that he opened the truck door. Miller has maintained that he never intended to hurt Denny, but jumped onto the truck to steal it or anything that was inside.

Tur said he saw Miller leaving the truck with a knapsack and saw him throw rocks toward at least one other vehicle. But Tur added that he did not see Miller hit anybody, and could not say whether the rocks had damaged any cars.

Like Williams and Watson, Miller is charged with attempted murder, torture, aggravated mayhem and robbery in the attack on Denny.

“I don’t think they’ve proved any of those counts against Mr. Miller,” J. Patrick Maginnis, one of his lawyers, said after Monday’s session. “It’s going wonderfully for us.” Maginnis indicated that he might seek a reduction in bail for Miller, who is being held on $580,000 bond. But Municipal Judge Larry P. Fidler said he thought such a motion would be premature, and indicated that he would wait until the preliminary hearing is over before considering it.

Although Tur’s testimony took up most of the second day in a hearing that some observers predict could last all week, prosecutors called other witnesses as well. Among them were three good Samaritans who were drawn to Florence and Normandie by reports of trouble.

Jorge Arturo Gonzalez said he came to the intersection to help but ended up in the hospital after he was attacked while trying to assist Takao Hirata, who had been pulled from his car and assaulted.

Gonzalez identified himself on a prosecution videotape that showed a man punching him and knocking him to the pavement. As Gonzalez lay in the street, passersby pelted him with bottles and other objects. Gonzalez said his memory of the attack is poor, and he did not identify any of the suspects.

Greg Williams, who said he came to the intersection to be a “voice of reason,” rescued Hirata from the mob. Williams said he intervened after he saw the windows of Hirata’s truck shattered.

Under questioning by Dennis Palmieri, one of Damian Williams’ lawyers, Greg Williams said he did not see or hear anything that indicated anyone was directing the violence at the intersection. Police have suggested that Damian Williams helped target certain motorists for attacks.

Greg Williams did add that the violence was not entirely random.

“There was, from what I could see, a significant degree of discrminiation” in deciding who would be attacked, he said. “It had to do with the weighing of how light and how dark a person was, what race they were or were not, and how defenseless they were. . . . The violence appeared to be directed toward European-Americans, Asian-Americans and Hispanic-Americans.”

Prosecutors closed the session by calling Bobby C. Green, a truck driver who heard of Denny being beaten and rushed to help.

“God just told me to get up,” Green said, adding that by the time he arrived Denny was back in the cab of the truck but was badly dazed and bleeding from cuts to his face and head.

“I said, ‘I’m a truck driver. Let me drive you to the hospital,’ ” Green recalled. “He just told me, ‘Thank you.’ ”