ny liquor stores and convenience stores, were looted and destroyed during the three-day spree of lawlessness. Naturally, the coin-op games inside these locations were also stolen, trashed or burned. At least one suburban arcade had 15 games trashed by angry youths, and CNN reported that a downtown arcade was the site of gunfire aimed at National Guard units.
Miraculously, L.A.'s distributorships came through safely, despite being located in the middle of riots and fires. Rioting began in mid-afternoon on Thursday, April 30 after word hit the street that all four L.A. police were found "not guilty" in the Rodney King assault case.
According to Sandy Bettelman of C.A. Robinson & Co., the firm was still doing business on Thursday afternoon, then shut down as conditions worsened. "By Thursday night it was even worse than the TV coverage could convey," Sandy Bettelman said. "Driving home, I passed many buildings on fire, looters, and no police anywhere. The city truly was a war zone."
After C.A.'s crew evacuated the building, thugs bashed down the distributorship's warehouse gate and also broke in the front double doors leading into C.A.'s showroom. Sometime during the night, a rioter apparently tried to throw a Molotov cocktail up to C.A.'s roof, but it hit
the side of the building and fell back to the street. At one point during the night, a neighbor who lives next door to C.A. Robinson came to the distributorship's rescue, shooting his pistol in the air (the man is a veteran of the U.S. armed services) and chasing rioters away.
The next morning, Sandy Bettelman and a couple of armed employees came to secure the building. Inside, they found a lead pipe and a can of lighter fluid. Said a grateful Sandy: "We made it, but just barely."
A few blocks down the street, Betson Pacific also made it through the riots with no physical damage to their building or inventory. How-
