What else is also "beside the point?"

How many times have you seen the Rodney King video?

How many times have you read about Rodney King?

And how many times have you heard the names of anyone who died during the Rodney King riots?

How about Arturo Carlos Miranda?

Miranda, a 23-year-old Mexican-American, was driving home from a South-Central park with a nephew and a friend. A blue car pulled up and someone fired one shot, hitting Miranda in the chest.

"Beside the point."

How about Dwight Taylor?

Taylor, a 43-year-old African-American, stood on a South L.A. street, where he had stopped on his way home from work. Someone drove by and shot him in the neck.

"Beside the point."

Did you ever hear of Eduardo Canedo Vela?

Car trouble led to the death of Vela, a 33-year-old Mexican-American from Arvin, who was driving with two friends when their car broke down on Slauson Avenue. Vela stayed with the light-blue, 1986 Ford Taurus, while his companions looked for a phone. When they returned, Vela was on his back in the street, with a gunshot wound to the chest. Vela left behind a wife, Rosa, and an 8-month-old daughter.

"Beside the point."

Did you ever hear of Anthony Lamarr Netherly?

A passing motorist found Netherly, a 21-year-old African-American, lying in the street and took him to Martin Luther King Jr. Medical Center. He had been shot in the left eye. Netherly was a nurse's assistant.

"Beside the point."

John Henry Willers?

It appears that this man's kindness cost him his life. Thirty-seven-year-old Willers, a white man from Salt Lake City, tried to help people involved in a head-on collision in Mission Hills. Passersby gunned him down, the fatal shot piercing his heart.

Nissar Daoud Mustafa?

Arsonists torched the J.J. Newberry Department store on South Western Avenue. Nearly four months later, on August 12, a worker found the body of Mustafa, a 20-year-old Indian or Middle Easterner, in the rubble. Mustafa had lived at 326 S. Normandie Ave. in the Wilshire District.

Elias Garcia Rivera?

Hours after the jury verdict, a group of African-American men stood outside their North Hollywood apartment collecting donations to retry the white officers. One resident gave $2 and resisted demands to give more. He tried to run away but was hit on the head with a board. His neighbor, Rivera, intervened and was struck in the head, suffering a broken skull. He went into a coma, and his family removed him from life-support on December 16. A jury convicted Traville Craig, 19, of murder, and he received a life sentence with no chance of parole.

Ira Frederick McCurry?

McCurry, a 45-year-old white male, was found dead on the street, shot through the right eye as he pleaded with looters not to burn down a store next to his house. He was a maintenance worker for L.A. County Parks and Recreation Department.

Meeker Mardah Gibson? Did you ever hear his name?

Gibson, a 35-year-old African-American, may have been talking on a gas-station pay phone when he took a shotgun blast to the chest. His body was found May 1. His wife, Valerie, survived him.

William Anthony Ross?

Ross, a 25-year-old African-American, burned to death inside a grocery store looted and torched in Koreatown. Ross died, curled up under a metal desk in the office, with a wad of cash in a pant pocket. The coroner ruled the death a homicide.

Howard A. Epstein?

Epstein, a 45-year-old white man from Orinda, was westbound on Slauson Avenue in South-Central, when someone in another car fired at his vehicle. The shot hit Epstein in the left temple. His Ford Thunderbird kept going until it hit a tree. While Epstein lay bleeding, rioters robbed him and looted his car. The crowd's hostility was so intense, police towed the car with the body still inside. Epstein had come to L.A. to check on his business. He left behind a wife, Stephanie.

Thanh Lam? Does that name ring a bell?

The riot did not keep Monterey Park resident Lam, a 25-year-old Vietnamese-American, from trying to make deliveries for his family's small grocery. He was eastbound on Alondra Boulevard, in his 1989 Toyota truck with a camper shell, and stopped at a red light at Willowbrook. A late-1970s or early-1980s blue Cadillac pulled up, and a front-seat passenger, described as an African-American man in his early 20s, yelled a racial slur and opened fire, hitting Lam four times, three times in the chest and once in the back.