Murder of Tupac Shakur

On the night of September 7, 1996, rapper Tupac Shakur was shot multiple times in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas, Nevada that led to his death six days later on September 13, 1996.

Description

Tupac Shakur had attended the Mike Tyson – Bruce Seldon boxing match with Suge Knight at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. After leaving the match, one of Knight's associates spotted Orlando "Baby Lane" Anderson, a Crips gang member from Compton, California in the MGM Grand lobby. Earlier that year, Anderson and a group of Crips had robbed a member of Death Row's entourage in a Foot Locker store. Knight's associate told Shakur and Shakur attacked Anderson. Shakur's entourage, as well as Knight and his followers, assisted in assaulting Anderson. The fight was captured on the hotel's video surveillance. After the brawl, Shakur went with Knight to the Death Row-owned Club 662 (now known as restaurant/club Seven). Chuck Philips reported:

"The BMW 750 sedan, with rap magnate Marion "Suge" Knight at the wheel, was leading a procession of luxury vehicles past the MGM Grand Hotel and Caesars Palace, on their way to a hot new nightclub. It was after 11 on a Saturday night--Sept. 7, 1996. The caravan paused at a crowded intersection a block from the Strip.

Shakur flirted with a car full of women, unaware that a white Cadillac had quietly pulled up beside him on the right side. A hand emerged from the Cadillac. In it was a semiautomatic pistol, aimed straight at Shakur.

Many of the rapper's lyrics seemed to foretell this moment.

"The fast life ain't everything they told ya," he sang in an early hit, "Soulja's Story."

"Never get much older, following the tracks of a soulja."

The shooting

At around 11:00–11:05 pm, they were halted on Las Vegas Boulevard by Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department bicycle police for playing the car stereo too loudly and not having license plates. The plates were found in the trunk of Knight's car; the party was released a few minutes later without being cited. At about 11:10 pm, while they were stopped at a red light at Flamingo Road near the intersection of Koval Lane in front of the Maxim Hotel, a vehicle occupied by two women pulled up on their left side. Shakur, who was standing up through the sunroof, exchanged words with the two women, and invited them to go to Club 662. At approximately 11:15 pm, a white, four-door, late-model Cadillac with an unknown number of occupants pulled up to the sedan's right side, rolled down a window, and rapidly fired gunshots at Shakur. He was hit in the chest, pelvis, and his right hand and thigh. One of the rounds went into Shakur's right lung. Knight was hit in the head by fragmentation. Bodyguard Frank Alexander stated that when he was about to ride along with the rapper in Knight's car, Shakur asked him to drive the car of Shakur's fiancée Kidada Jones instead, in case they needed additional vehicles from Club 662 back to the hotel. The bodyguard reported in his documentary, Before I Wake, that shortly after the assault, one of the convoy's cars followed the assailant but he never heard from the occupants.

After arriving on the scene, police and paramedics took Knight and a wounded Shakur to the University Medical Center of Southern Nevada. According to an interview with the music video director Gobi, while at the hospital, he received news from a Death Row marketing employee that the shooters had called the record label and threatened Shakur. Gobi told the Las Vegas police, but said they claimed to be understaffed. No attackers came. At the hospital, Shakur was heavily sedated, was placed on life support machines, and was ultimately put under a barbiturate-induced coma after repeatedly trying to get out of the bed. While in the critical care unit, on the afternoon of Friday, September 13, 1996, Shakur died of internal bleeding; doctors attempted to revive him but could not stop the hemorrhaging. His mother, Afeni, made the decision to tell the doctors to stop. He was pronounced dead at 4:03 pm (PDT). The official cause of death was noted as respiratory failure and cardiopulmonary arrest in connection with multiple gunshot wounds.

Investigative reports on the murder and why the police probe failed

In 2002, the LA Times published a two-part story by Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Chuck Philips, titled "Who Killed Tupac Shakur?", based on a yearlong investigation that reconstructed the crime and the events leading up to it. Evidence gathered by Philips showed that: "the shooting was carried out by a Compton gang called the Southside Crips to avenge the beating of one of its members by Shakur a few hours earlier. Orlando Anderson, the Crip whom Shakur had attacked, fired the fatal shots. Las Vegas police discounted Anderson as a suspect and interviewed him only once, briefly. He was later killed in an unrelated gang shooting." Philips's article also implicated East Coast rappers including Biggie, Tupac's rival at the time, and several New York criminals. The second article in Philips' series dissected the murder investigation and detailed how the Las Vegas police department mismanaged the probe and why the homicide remains officially unsolved. His article showed that the specific missteps of the Vegas police: were 1. discounting the fight that occurred just hours before the shooting, in which Shakur was involved in beating Orlando Anderson in the Las Vegas MGM lobby, 2. failing to follow up with a member of Shakur's entourage who witnessed the shooting who told Vegas police he could probably identify one or more of the assailants—the witness was killed just weeks later, and 3. failing to follow-up a lead from a witness who spotted a white Cadillac similar to the car from which the fatal shots were fired and from which the shooters escaped.

One year after the shooting, Las Vegas police told Las Vegas Sun investigative report Cathy Scott that Shakur's murder "may never be solved." "We're at a standstill," Metro Police homicide Sgt. Kevin Manning, who headed the investigation, told her. The case slowed early in the investigation, he said, as few new clues came in and witnesses clammed up.

The Notorious B.I.G's role

The late rapper The Notorious B.I.G. denied playing a role in the murder. In support of his denials, Biggie's family produced computerized invoices suggesting that Biggie was working in a New York City recording studio the night Shakur was shot. Biggie's manager, Wayne Barrow, and rapper James "Lil' Cease" Lloyd publicly denied that Biggie had a role in the crime and said they were with him in the recording studio the night of the shooting. Although Biggie's family produced computerized receipts to show that Biggie was in the studio at the time of the murder, The New York Times called the evidence "inconclusive," noting:

The pages purport to be three computer printouts from Daddy's House, indicating that Wallace was in the studio recording a song called Nasty Boy on the afternoon Shakur was shot. They indicate that Wallace wrote half the session, was In and out/sat around and laid down a ref, shorthand for a reference vocal, the equivalent of a first take.But nothing indicates when the documents were created. And Louis Alfred, the recording engineer listed on the sheets, said in an interview that he remembered recording the song with Wallace in a late-night session, not during the day. He could not recall the date of the session but said it was likely not the night Shakur was shot. We would have heard about it, Mr. Alfred said."

Biggie was shot to death in a drive-by shooting by an unknown assailant on March 9, 1997 in Los Angeles, California, six months after Tupac was killed. Unlike Shakur, Biggie died the day he was shot. Both murders remain officially unsolved.

External links

• Philips, Chuck, "Who Killed Tupac Shakur; Part 1 [1]
• Philips, Chuck, "Who Killed Tupac Shakur; Part 2"[2]