LOS ANGELES After his beating by police stunned the nation and a jurys decision not to hold them responsible sparked a deadly race riot that left Los Angeles smoldering, Rodney King in a quavering voice pleaded on national television for peace while the city burned.

But peace never quite came for King not after the fires died down, after two of the officers who broke his skull multiple times were punished in a different court, after race relations were reshaped and police tactics were reformed.

His life, which ended Sunday at age 47 after he was pulled from the bottom of his swimming pool, was a continual struggle even as the city he helped change moved on.

The images preserved on an infamous grainy video of the black driver curled up on the ground while four white officers clubbed him more than 50 times with batons became a national symbol of police brutality in 1991.

More than a year later, when the officers acquittals touched off one of the most destructive race riots in history, his scarred face and softspoken question Can we all get along? spurred the nation to confront its difficult racial history.

But while Los Angeles race relations and the citys police department made strides forward, King kept coming before police and courts, struggling with alcohol addiction and arrests, periodically re-appearing publicly for a stint on Celebrity Rehab or a celebrity boxing match. He spent the last months of his life promoting a memoir he titled The Riot Within: From Rebellion to Redemption.

King was declared dead at a hospital after his fiance called 911 at 5:25 a.m. to say she found him submerged in the pool at his home in Rialto, about an hours drive from Los Angeles. Officers found King in the deep end of the pool, pulled him out and tried unsuccessfully to revive him with CPR.

An autopsy was expected to determine the cause of death within two days; police found no alcohol or drug paraphernalia near the pool and said foul play wasnt suspected. Kings next-door neighbor, Sandra Gardea, said that around 3 a.m., she heard music and someone really crying, like really deep emotions. … Like tired or sad, you know?

I then heard someone say, OK, Please stop. Go inside the house. … We heard quiet for a few minutes Then after that we heard a splash in the back.

Kings death was a grim ending to a saga that began 21 years earlier he went for a drive with two friends, eventually leading authorities on a chase after he was spotted speeding.

The 25-year-old, on parole from a robbery conviction had been drinking, which he later said led him to try to evade police. He was finally stopped by four Los Angeles police officers who struck him more than 50 times with their batons, kicked him and shot him with stun guns. He was left with 11 skull fractures, a broken eye socket and facial nerve damage.

A man who had quietly stepped outside his home to observe the commotion videotaped most of it and turned a copy over to a TV station. It was played over and over for the following year, inflaming racial tensions across the country.

It seemed that the videotape would be the key evidence to a guilty verdict against the officers, whose felony assault trial was moved to the predominantly white suburb of Simi Valley, Calif. Instead, on April 29, 1992, a jury with no black members acquitted three of the officers on state charges in the beating; a mistrial was declared for a fourth.

Violence erupted immediately, starting in Los Angeles. They lasted for three days, killing 55 people, injuring more than 2,000 and setting swaths of Los Angeles aflame, causing $1 billion in damage. Police, seemingly caught off-guard, were quickly outnumbered by rioters and retreated. As the uprising spread to the citys Koreatown area, shop owners armed themselves and engaged in running gun battles with looters.

Although the four officers who beat King Stacey Koon, Theodore Briseno, Timothy Wind and Laurence Powell were not convicted of state charges, Koon and Powell were convicted of federal civil rights charges and were sentenced to more than two years in prison. King received a $3.8 million civil judgment; one of the jurors in the case, Cynthia Kelley, is his fiance.

But he quickly lost the money as he invested in a record label and other failed ventures. He was arrested multiple times for drunken driving including last summer in Riverside, Calif. He continually struggled with alcohol he started drinking at age 11, he wrote in his autobiography.

Despite his troubles, King remained upbeat as he confronted the 20 year anniversary of the LA riots and considered his legacy.

Americas been good to me after I paid the price and stayed alive through it all, he told The Associated Press in an interview earlier this year. This part of my life is the easy part now.

He had three daughters and was engaged to Kelley.