A couple who massacred 14 people at a holiday party in California were discussing martyrdom online a year before they met in person and married, FBI director James Comey said.

Rodney King has been remembered in Los Angeles as a forgiving man who bore the scars of his infamous beating with dignity.

Rodney King, whose 1991 beating at the hands of police led to deadly race riots in Los Angeles the following year, was found dead in a swimming pool yesterday in Rialto, California, police said.

Rodney King, the black motorist whose 1991 videotaped beating by Los Angeles police officers was the touchstone for one of the most destructive race riots in US history, was found dead at the bottom of his swimming pool today. He was 47.

One person died and 13 others were injured when a driver intentionally steered his car onto a pavement on the crowded Las Vegas Strip and then accelerated in a deadly scene resembling “humans being mowed down like a lawnmower”, police said today.