Rafer Johnson, a Los Angeles legend who won the 1960 Olympic decathlon gold medal, helped organize the 1984 Games in L.A. and wrestled the gun from Sen.
Robert F. Kennedy’s assassin at the Ambassador Hotel in 1968, died today at his home in Sherman Oaks. He was 86. His family confirmed the news but did not provide a cause of death.Born on August 18, 1934, in Hillsboro, Texas, Johnson moved with his family to the San Joaquin Valley when he was 9 and became a four-sport high school star while working as a cotton picker with his father and siblings.
The town’s middle school now is named in his honor.Johnson already was a local hero at UCLA, where he would become student body president but faced racial discrimination, when he began to draw
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