Rodney King found dead in pool

Rodney King, the black motorist whose brutal on-camera clubbing by white cops led to the 1992 Los Angeles riots when the officers were aquitted, died Sunday in his pool.

Just 47, King was bedeviled by alcohol both before and after the battering that made him a global symbol of police brutality.

King's third fiancee, Cynthia Kelley, found him lifeless at the bottom of the pool at his home about 55 miles east of Los Angeles and called 911 at 5:25 a.m., police said.

Kelley, who met King when she was a juror on his civil case, told friends he was drinking and smoking marijuana all day, TMZ reported. Just before she heard a splash and found him in deep end, she said he was naked, yelling and banging on the window, TMZ said.

Police Lt. Dean Hardin said there was no sign of foul play.

The 1992 L.A. riots, some of the worst America has ever seen, lasted six days. They left 55 people dead, nearly $1 billion in property destroyed and swaths of Los Angeles aflame. The military was called in to stop the rioting.

At the height of the violence, King appeared at an impromptu press conference to make what became an iconic plea: “People, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along?”

“Through all that he had gone through with his beating and his personal demons, he was never one to not call for reconciliation and for people to overcome and forgive,” the Rev. Al Sharpton said Sunday.

Sharpton said King’s legacy was to make America wake up to racial profiling and police misconduct.

King himself saw even greater changes born from the day LAPD cops tasered him and rained more than 50 baton blows on his prone, crawling body after a high-speed freeway chase.

“People looked at civil rights and my situation and said it was time for a change. Now we have a black president,” King told the Daily News in April.

King was a 25-year-old paroled robberdriving drunk when he fled from an attempted traffic stop that would have sent him back to prison. He led the California Highway Patrol on an 8-mile chase that reached up to 115 mph over freeways and through residential neighborhoods.

When King finally stopped, five white LAPD officers tasered him, kicked him and battered him repeatedly with batons, making no effort to cuff him.