The Killing of Tupac Shakur (3 page)

If they’d been caught packing weapons without permits, the police could have charged them and they could have faced stiff penalties. The majority of the security guards were accustomed to carrying sidearms. But not that night.

While they may have felt the same as Tupac, that they were going to a party in a town far removed from the street-gang violence long associated with Los Angeles, they had to make a hard choice. In the end, on the advice of Suge’s attorney, the bodyguards left their guns behind.

Had the group decided to ignore the law, they no doubt could have walked undetected into the MGM Grand Garden
that night with guns if they’d wanted to. According to John Husk, executive director of the MGM’s arena operations, “There were no metal detectors used at the Mike Tyson fight on September 7th.”

Las Vegas police were out in droves and private security was heavy at the Grand Garden Arena before, during, and after the fight. Sergeant Ron Swift, with LVMPD’s Special Events Section, said officers were assigned inside the casino near the boxing arena to strengthen the hotel’s own security force.

“On property, we had some officers augmenting hotel security at the event itself,” Swift said. “We do it at every major fight, as well as at concerts, rodeos, and parades.”

The arena was not the only place cops were assigned to provide a show of force that night. Special Events officers, working overtime, were stationed at the private gate to Suge’s neighborhood, which Metro, because of a county ordinance, does not patrol. The homeowners associations of many gated communities in Las Vegas Valley hire private security officers to patrol inside their walls. Las Vegas police were also contracted to be present at Club 662 after the fight. Overtime for the off-duty Metro officers was billed to Death Row Records.

“[Death Row] asked us to do it,” Sergeant Swift said. “My only concern at the time was traffic and public safety. If a company comes in and asks for extra security, we provide it. Death Row requested it formally from Metro.”

One officer said that Death Row had also asked that African-American cops only be assigned to work Club 662 and Suge’s house. “The request was made for only black police officers,” the source said. “As far as I know, we complied.”

But Swift couldn’t confirm it, saying, “I’ve never heard that Knight requested black officers. The request may have come in, but I didn’t hear about it.” Still, the same source revealed that a black sergeant, along with six to eight other black officers, were assigned to the party at Suge Knight’s house following the fight.

Tupac felt safe as he rode in the BMW toward Club 662 – Suge was driving, friends and bodyguards were nearby, and
Las Vegas cops were stationed at the house and the club. In fact, the event at Club 662 was sponsored by LVMPD Officer Patrick Barry, a retired professional boxer, to raise money for Barry’s Boxing Gym on Vanessa Drive in the southwest area of the city. Tupac, Run DMC, and Danny Boy were scheduled to perform at the charity event, intended, ironically, to raise money to keep children away from violence. Club 662’s marquee advertised the event as “Barry’s Boxing Benefit, produced by SKP (Suge Knight Productions). A line started forming outside the club at 5:30 p.m. Hundreds of people paid $75 each to get in.

Barry’s Boxing Benefit, organized by Las Vegas attorney George Kelesis, who once represented Suge, was also intended to help Tupac stay out of prison by fulfilling a court order and condition of probation in one of his criminal cases, in which he was ordered to perform community service in lieu of jail time.

The convoy was headed east on Flamingo Road when it stopped for a red light at Koval Lane, a busy intersection only a half-mile from the Strip across from the Maxim Hotel. One driver in the caravan pulled up a car length ahead to the right. Another car stopped directly behind them; in it were rapper Yafeu “Kadafi” Fula and two associates, Out-lawz rapper Malcolm “E.D.I.” Greenridge and bodyguard Frank Alexander. Another car was behind theirs. Riding in it, along with a couple of other people, was Tupac’s friend Chris “Casper” Musgrave. Still another car was in front of the BMW at the stoplight. The sidewalk and street were busy with pedestrians. The BMW was boxed in.

Four young black women, sitting at the same intersection in a Chrysler sedan to the left of the BMW, turned, smiled at Suge and Tupac, and caught their attention.

A moment later, a late-model Cadillac with three to four black men inside pulled up directly to the right of the BMW and skidded to a stop. A gunman sitting in the back seat on the driver’s side stuck a weapon out of the left-rear window of the white Caddy, in full view of the entourage. The gunman tracked Tupac from the back seat.

Suge and Tupac saw the Cadillac, but had no time to react.

Suddenly, the sounds of the night were shattered by the
pop, pop, pop
of a killer inside the Cadillac emptying a magazine from a high-powered semiautomatic handgun. At least 13 rounds were sprayed (that’s how many bullet holes and casings investigators counted) into the passenger side of the BMW. Five bullets pierced the passenger door; some shattered the windows.

Startled and panicky, Tupac tried frantically to scramble into the back seat through the well between the front seats. But he was seat-belted in. In doing so, he exposed his middle and lower torso to the gunfire and took a round in his right hip. Suge grabbed Tupac, pulled him down, and covered him. He yelled, “Get down!” That’s when Suge was hit with a fragment in the back of his neck.

Tupac was plugged with bullets at close range. Three rounds pierced his body. One bullet lodged in his chest, entering under his right arm. Another went through his hip, slicing through his lower abdomen, and ended up floating around in his pelvic area. Yet another bullet hit his right hand, shattering the bone of his index finger and knocking off a large chunk of gold from a ring he was wearing on another finger. (Tupac wore three gold-and-diamond rings on his right hand that night.) The gunfire nailed Tupac to the leather bucket seat. Glass and blood were everywhere.

Suge was grazed in his neck from the flying shrapnel and glass fragments. A fragment lodged in the back of his skull at the base of his neck. Bullets also blew out two of the BMW’s tires.

The gunfire ended as quickly as it had begun. The shooting of Tupac Shakur, executed in cold blood, was over in a matter of seconds.

“You hit?” Suge asked Tupac.

“I’m hit,” Tupac answered.

Frank Alexander said, “All I saw was the position of the shooter. He was in the back seat. I saw the arm of the shooter come out. I saw a silhouette of him, which was a black person
wearing a skull cap, a beanie cap.

“I ran up to the back of the BMW. I got to the trunk of the car. Then the car [Suge’s] took off and made a U-turn. I was shocked the car moved. There was no way to have seen all of that gunfire and then for someone to still be alive. The Cadillac made a right turn on a green light. It was the only car making a right turn.” Frank ran back to his car, jumped in, and followed Suge.

Some reports and LVMPD sources said members of the entourage immediately returned fire. Although no other casings were found, police said revolvers may have been used, which leave no tell-tale shells behind.

Sergeant Manning admitted, “We did hear reports that gunfire was returned, but we were unable to validate it. There was no evidence.”

Two LVMPD bicycle patrol officers were on a call concerning a stolen vehicle on the second floor of the parking garage at the Maxim when they heard the first shots fired at 11:17 p.m. Officer Paul Ehler and his partner immediately hopped on their mountain bikes and pedaled toward the street, where they heard more gunfire. They saw the black BMW driver about to flee the gunman.

The driver of the Cadillac, in the meantime, floored it and fled. The Caddy made a right turn onto Koval Lane and vanished. It happened so quickly that by the time the bicycle cops arrived seconds later, there was no trace of the Cadillac. The shooter and his associates escaped under the cover of darkness.

Other drivers who witnessed the shooting stopped and stared, dumbfounded. Shocked drivers maneuvered their cars around the BMW, driving over the crime scene and the spent bullets. Horrified pedestrians milled about the busy sidewalks.

Paul Gillford, a sound man for a syndicated TV show broadcast live from the Imperial Palace, was just getting off work and was on Koval Lane at Flamingo when the shooting took place. He said he, too, watched as all the cars left the
scene in different directions.

At least six cars behind Tupac tried chasing the Cadillac as it sped south on Koval Lane, away from the scene. The rest of the crew stayed with Tupac and Suge.

Suge panicked. He knew he had to find a doctor for Tupac, and fast. Tupac looked like he was dying, bleeding to death. Suge was splattered with both Tupac’s and his own blood. Tupac’s breathing was labored and shallow. But his eyes were opened wide and he was alert.

Suge had a flip Motorola cellular telephone with him, resting on the sedan’s console, but he didn’t use it to call 911 for help. With adrenaline pumping and Tupac bleeding heavily as he sat slumped in the front seat, Suge somehow managed to make a U-turn in the heavy traffic, even though his car now had two flat tires. But the sedan had a powerful 4.4-liter V-8 engine, so Suge floored it and got out of there, flat tires and all.

“[The bike cops] saw about ten cars pull U-turns and head west on Flamingo at a high rate of speed,” then-Sergeant Greg McCurdy told the
Las Vegas Sun.
Not all the cars stayed with Suge, though, once they saw they were being followed by the cops. Three followed him all the way to the Strip.

Both bicycle cops were pedaling fast, tailing the BMW. Why one officer didn’t follow Suge while the other stayed behind at the shooting – the scene of the crime – was more than surprising. The officers said it was because they didn’t know what had gone down at that point. They’d heard shots being fired, but they made a split-second decision not to stay and secure the crime scene. They felt it was more important to follow Suge, one of the victims, not a suspect, and his entourage. It would prove to be the first of several questionable decisions made early on in the criminal investigation. One of the first lessons taught to cadets is to secure a crime scene until investigators arrive. The bike officers did not.

The scene of the shooting wasn’t secured for at least 20 minutes while cars and pedestrians trampled over the evidence. No one will ever know how many potential witnesses
left that scene when no officers were there to hold them for questioning.

One of the bike cops, in pursuit of Suge and his entourage, radioed dispatch and called for backup: “Shots fired. I repeat, shots fired. Possible victims. This unit in pursuit of vehicle. Need assistance. Leaving the vicinity of Koval and Flamingo, proceeding westbound.”

As Suge made the U-turn, he hollered to Tupac, “You need a hospital, Pac. I’m gonna get you to a hospital right now.”

“
I
need a hospital?” Tupac said. “
You
the one shot in the head. Don’t you think you need a hospital?” He started moaning, but managed to utter, “Gotta keep your eyes open.”

With three cars full of friends and associates still following closely behind, Suge, for some reason, headed back to the Strip. Bike officer Paul Ehler continued pedaling as he radioed for backup and medical assistance. Fifty yards up Flamingo, Suge’s car became snarled in traffic. He frantically weaved the BMW in and out of the left-turn lane and over the median, then floored it.

Suge and Tupac made it onto the Strip. The BMW’s rims caught the center divider as Suge turned left onto the boulevard, running a red light and giving the car its third flat tire. Suge then straightened out the steering wheel and drove south down Las Vegas Boulevard. He weaved in and out of the busy traffic for a quarter of a mile, running another red light at Harmon Avenue. There, exactly a mile from the shooting scene, Suge Knight’s BMW got caught up on the median, then lunged back on the street, coming to a grinding halt in the middle of the busy intersection on the Strip.

That’s when the Strip got really crazy.

Sirens from patrol cruisers, ambulances, a fire department rescue unit, and the highway patrol screamed as every available unit converged on the scene.

Bodyguard Alexander said that when Suge’s BMW “turned into the intersection of Harmon, everyone else in the entourage was stuck at a red light,” half a block behind
him. When the light turned green, he said, they headed into the intersection.

Cops started yelling at everyone in Tupac’s entourage, ordering them to “get out of your vehicles” and “get your faces on the ground,” to lie flat on the pavement with their hands behind their heads. The police held some of the group at gunpoint, witnesses said. Even Suge Knight, bleeding from his head wound, was ordered to lie face down, with legs spread apart, on the street until the police figured out what was going on.

Alexander said it went down like this: “The only person who was face down on the pavement when I got there was Suge. Suge was spread out on the ground. I identified myself as a bodyguard and told them Suge was a victim and not part of the shooting. Then they let him up.”

Blood was everywhere. The BMW’s front leather seats were soaked with it and Tupac’s cotton shirt was solid crimson.

By the time the paramedics arrived, the cops had things under control. They let the members of Tupac’s entourage get up off the street, one by one, and sit on the curb of the Strip sidewalk while they waited for general-assignment and homicide detectives to arrive. As police sat them down on the curb, they admonished them not to discuss the shooting with each other. The moment they let him up, Suge ran to the BMW, to Tupac.

When the paramedics arrived, the mortally wounded Tupac was being lifted out of the front seat by Suge Knight and Frank Alexander. They placed him on the ground.

Tupac was conscious, but short of breath, as the emergency-response teams prepared to rush him and Suge, who was still bleeding from his neck injury, to University Medical Center, Las Vegas’ county hospital, about three miles away.