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Breaion King hopes her Oscar-nominated story gets people talking

Though the HBO documentary inspired by her story did not win the Oscar, Breaion King hopes her arrest gets people talking.

LOS ANGELES -- It was a big night at the Oscars for an Austin woman.

Her violent arrest by an APD officer in 2015 was the subject of an HBO documentary called "Traffic Stop."

Tonight, that 30-minute film did not take home an Academy Award, but Breaion King said she is still walking away fulfilled.

KVUE and the Austin American-Statesman's Tony Plohetski sat down with Breaion King just before she left Austin for L.A. When they first met nearly two years ago, she said she wanted to help continue the discussion about relations between police and minorities.

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She said win or lose tonight, she feels like she has accomplished that goal.

It started with a stop for speeding along Riverside Drive in the summer of 2015 and quickly led to the violent arrest of teacher Breaion King.

For a year, her story went untold. Then it became part of a national discussion, bolstered in part by this HBO documentary.

"I definitely believe I have accomplished my goal. We've raised awareness about these issues between minorities and police officers," said King.

Filmmakers spent several days with King soon after we first shared her story. A few months ago, King went to New York for its first screening. Then she found out about a month ago it was nominated for an Academy Award -- and that she would be traveling to L.A.

"I am super excited to go to the Oscars," she said. "I still don't believe it, so I'm kind of like, meh, I'm going to the Oscars. I'm going to the Oscars."

She said before the awards that even if it didn't win, she still feels like she did what she first set out to do.

"If it does not win, it is OK because I got a chance to share my story, and I got a chance to help people through this process, and that's all I ever wanted to do," King said. "I always wanted to help people."

King said there still isn't a day that goes by when she doesn't think about what happened or talk about what happened.

Plohetski asked her if there is anything about that day that she would change, and she said she wishes she had not been speeding.

The officer who arrested King, Bryan Richter, was fired in January for a second excessive force case last year.

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