Obituary: George Holliday fortuitously filmed the beating of Rodney King
The Los Angeles plumber died on September 19th, aged 61
FOR NEAR ON nine minutes, George Holliday stood outside his second-floor windows with his three-pound Sony Handycam clamped to his eye. It was somewhere round one in the morning on March 3rd 1991. He and his wife Maria had been woken from deep sleep by the clatter of a helicopter low over their apartment in Lake View Terrace in north Los Angeles, and the sirens of police cars. His first thought, hearing all that, was to grab the camera.
This article appeared in the Obituary section of the print edition under the headline “The man on the balcony”
From the October 2nd 2021 edition
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