Apparently, Not Everyone is Getting Along

Here's a blast from the past.

Rodney King is shot while riding his bike

After his 1991 videotaped beating by four white Los Angeles police officers whose acquittal touched off the 1992 riots, Rodney G. King became an overnight celebrity who symbolized for many the perception of unfair treatment of young black men by police.

But, since then, the spotlight has shifted to King's long series of run-ins with police and domestic disputes.

Television cameras swarmed his house once again Thursday after an incident Wednesday night in which he told authorities that he was riding his bicycle after 11 p.m. in a dicey area near the border of San Bernardino and Rialto and was sprayed with pellets from a shotgun.

He reportedly pedaled his bike for roughly a mile to his Jackson Street home in Rialto before calling police and heading to the hospital in an ambulance.

Rialto police, who were the first to respond, said King was intoxicated when they arrived and that it was difficult to decipher what had happened.

"We sent a couple of officers out to his address here in Rialto, but he didn't really tell us a whole lot other than he'd been shot," said Rialto Police Sgt. Don Lewis. "It looked like birdshot, looked like a long-distance shot."

On Thursday morning, San Bernardino Police Lt. Scott Paterson said police were still trying to determine what "was factual."

In interviews with investigators who visited him Thursday afternoon at Arrowhead Regional Medical Center in Colton, King reported that a man and a woman approached him and demanded his bicycle.

When he rode away, King told investigators, someone sprayed his shoulder with pellets from a shotgun. King had pellet wounds on his face, arm and back, Paterson said.

You would think a man of such wealth could afford a driver.

Well, ever since he rose to fame for resisting arrest, King has had an endless string of run-ins with the law.

Shocking, isn't it?

* In May 1991, he was arrested on suspicion of trying to run over a vice officer who allegedly found him with a transvestite prostitute in Hollywood, but no charges were filed.

* In 1993, King entered an alcohol rehabilitation program and was placed on probation after crashing his vehicle into a block wall in downtown Los Angeles with a blood-alcohol level twice the legal limit.

* In July 1995, he was arrested by Alhambra police, who alleged that he hit his wife with his car, knocking her to the ground. He was sentenced to 90 days in jail after being convicted of hit-and-run.

* In 1999, he was sentenced to 90 days in San Bernardino County jail and put on probation for four years after a domestic dispute involving one of his daughters and her mother. He was required to attend a batterer's treatment program and a child-abuse program, according to court records.

* In 2001, King was ordered to attend a yearlong drug treatment program after he was arrested for indecent exposure and being under the influence of PCP at Ganesha Park in Pomona.

* In April 2003, Rialto police watched him weave through traffic in his Ford Expedition at more than 100 mph before plowing through a fence and into a San Bernardino house. He pleaded guilty to being under the influence of PCP and was sentenced to a six-month drug rehabilitation program followed by a 120-day jail sentence.

* That October, Rialto police arrested King on suspicion of punching his girlfriend in the stomach.

Susan Mickey, a spokeswoman for the San Bernardino County district attorney, said the office declined to prosecute the domestic violence case in 2003 and a subsequent September 2005 domestic violence case because of a lack of evidence.

In the September 2005 incident, King was arrested on suspicion of threatening to kill one of his daughters and her mother after the two women argued with his then-girlfriend, the Associated Press reported at the time.

I'm not surprised in the least he's still using PCP, since that was one of the substances he reportedly had in him while he was resisting arrest in the videotaped incident.