Witness of the Riots
Written By: Andrew Luis
During April 1992, my grandmother,
Brigida Luis, said she was watching the
news when she first heard about the riot. My
grandmother at the time lived in South Los
Ángeles, nearly fifteen minutes away from
the riots. “Me, and many people stayed
home from fear as many people became
malicious in the streets,” said my grandma.
The news only talked about the fires and
violence that were occurring and how it was
safer to stay away from that area. From
fear, most people went straight home from
work and most of the streets would be
lonely as many felt that the riots would start
to spread to nearby areas. My grandmother
saw the riots as an outpouring of violence
but she knew people did it to fight against
the injustice of police brutality. She was
afraid that the violence would spread all
over Los Angeles and feared that people
would start more fires. She was already
seeing the havoc people were creating and
how all the stores in that area where being
robbed and destroyed. “I felt bad for all the
stores that were robbed, a lot of local
businesses were affected from this around
my neighborhood,” she said. She became
more afraid once she started hearing that
buildings were burned down and people had
to evacuate their apartments.
A picture that was taken of my grandma, a
month before the riots had begun.
Over the course of the three days, it
felt as if the riots would never come to an
end. My grandmother began hearing that
people in other areas were preparing for the
riots to spread. She heard that people in
Koreatown where armed and prepretaing for
the rioters who were causing destruction.
Once the military troops were sent to end
the riots, people knew that the riots were
going to come to an end. By the next day,
the order was restored and many people
were arrested but it was over. For my
grandmother, to have witnessed all of that
and so close by really made her aware of
the violence that was prevalent in the 90s.
She also stated, “I was just glad it was
finally over, I was tired of being scared for
my family's safety”. Till this day she still
recalls the fear people felt to even be out in
the streets at any time of day.