The Shootings

Tupac was shot in New York in 1994, and died in 1996 in a fatal shooting in Las Vegas.

Pic Taken After The New York City Shooting '94

New York Shooting:

Sweatin' Bullets
Reporting by Eric Berman, Rob Kenner,
Ian Landau, Danyel Smith, Joe Tirella,
Josh Tyrangiel, Mimi Valdes, and Elizabeth Yow

Since before the day he was born, Tupac Shakur has battled "the system"-but never so dramatically as in the last 48 hours of November. On the 29th, a Manhattan jury had convened to deliberate charges of sodomy, sexual abuse, and weapons possession against Tupac, 23, and his codefendant, Charles Fuller, 24. They stood accused of molesting a 19-year-old woman in Tupac's $750-a-night, 38th-floor Parker Meridien Hotel suite on November 18, 1993. After the first day of deliberations, Tupac left for a publicity stop in Harlem, then went on to Times Square's Quad Recording Studio to record a track with Uptown Records' Little Shawn. Facing a maximum 25-year sentence, Tupac knew it might be his last recording session for some time.

At 12:20 a.m., Tupac was running more than an hour late when he and his three-man entourage swept past a black man sitting on a desk in the entranceway of the office building where Quad is located. The man got up from the desk as two confederates (also black) came in the door, and the three followed Tupac and his crew to the elevator, pulled out guns, and hollered, "Give up the jewelry, and get on the floor!" While his friends lay on the gray stone floor, Tupac cursed at the holdup men and lunged for one of the guns. The rapper was shot at least four times. His manager Freddie Moore was hit once. The robbers nabbed $5,000 worth of Moore's jewelry, as well as Tupac's $30,000 diamond ring and $10,000 in gold chains. They left Tupac's diamond-encrusted gold Rolex.

Moore gave chase, collapsing in front of a strip club next door. His friends dragged the severely wounded Tupac into the elevator and up to the eighth-floor studio to administer first aid. Tupac's first call was reportedly to his mom, Afeni Shakur, in Atlanta; then he called 911.

When the cops showed up, Tupac saw some familiar faces. Two of the first four police officers on the scene were William Kelly and Joseph Kelly (no relation), and "seconds later, Officer Craig McKernan arrived. McKernan had supervised the two Kellys in Tupac's arrest at the Parker Meridien and had just testified at the rape trial. "Hi, Officer McKernan," Shakur sputtered, lying naked in a pool of his own blood. "Hey, Tupac, you hang in there," McKernan responded, as an EMS team secured a brace around Tupac's neck and strapped him to a board. The stretcher didn't fit into the elevator, so he had to be propped upright, blood streaming down from his wounds. McKernan helped carry him out past a waiting photographer. "I can't believe you're taking my picture on a stretcher," Tupac groaned, flipping off the photographer.

Tupac was rushed to Bellevue Hospital. "He was hit by a low-caliber missile," says Dr. Leon Pachter, chief of Bellevue's trauma department. "Had it been a high-caliber missile, he'd have been dead." Tupac continued to bleed heavily all day, so at 1:30 p.m., Pachter and a 12-doctor team operated on the damaged blood vessel high in his right leg. At 4 p.m., he was out of surgery. At 6:45 p.m., against the vociferous complaints of his doctors, he checked himself out. "I haven't seen anybody in my 25-year professional career leave the hospital like this," says Dr. Pachter. Afeni, who had flown up from Atlanta, wheeled the heavily bandaged Tupac out the back door, fighting through a crowd of reporters.

The next day, Tupac made a surprise appearance in the Manhattan courtroom where his fate was being decided. He was wheeled in by Nation of Islam bodyguards, his charmed Rolex on his right wrist, his left wrist wrapped in gauze, and his bandaged head and leg covered by a wool-knit Yankees hat and a black Nike warm-up suit.

With his friends-including actors Mickey Rourke" and Jasmine Guy-rallied around, Tupac sat through the morning session before his right leg went numb. He then went uptown and secretly checked into Metropolitan Hospital Center on East 97th Street under the name of Bob Day.

Several hours later, the jury came back with verdicts on Tupac and Fuller: guilty of fondling the woman against her will-sexual abuse-but innocent on the weightier sodomy and weapon charges. A few jurors argued for full acquittal and viewed the verdict as a compromise. "There was a very strong feeling that there just was not enough evidence," says juror Richard Devitt.

"We're ecstatic that the jury found that there was almost no merit to these charges whatsoever," said Tupac's beaming lawyer, Michael Warren. He plans to appeal the sexual abuse conviction. Sentencing was delayed due to Tupac's condition, and he remained free on $25,000 bail.

For the second time in eight weeks, Tupac had beaten a felony rap. On October 7, in Atlanta, Fulton County DA Louis Slaton dropped the aggravated assault charges filed against Tupac on October 31, 1993. Tupac and his posse had shot two off-duty police officers in the buttocks and abdomen, but witnesses told the DA that Tupac and company had fired in self-defense after Officer Mark Whitwell fired at them. Whitwell resigned from the force seven months after the shooting.

Some conspiracy theorists leaped to the conclusion that Tupac had been set up and that the "robbery" was a payback for his perceived attacks on police; others concocted a revenge plot by the rape accuser. Tupac's lawyer fanned the flames, citing his' client's exaggerated suspicion of cops to explain his flight from the hospital.I The lawyer rejects the notion that this was a simple robbery: "These circumstances give rise for a reasonable person to raise an eyebrow."

The shooting of a young black man has rarely generated so much attention. "I hope people realize that the black male is under attack," says Nation of Islam minister Conrad Muhammad, who was on hand at the courthouse. "This is a wake-up call to the young men in the music industry. You have a moment onstage, a moment before the world-what will you do with it?"

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Las Vegas Shooting:

Article about the Shooting

Six months after the murder of rapper Tupac Shakur in Las Vegas-- a case in which no arrests have yet been made -- MTV News has obtained a 29-page document prepared by police in Compton, California, which reveals that only a few days after Shakur's murder last September 7th, Compton police had already learned the name of the man some local gang members believed to be responsible for the crime.

This document, it must be emphasized, is based largely on the words of Compton police informants. It does not legally prove who killed Tupac, nor does it legally prove that his death was a gang murder. Proof is the job of the courts. However, the Compton police document does contain a startling account of the events that led up to Shakur's murder and a shot-by-shot account of the five day blood bath his killing seems to have set off in Compton. A gang-war that apparently left three men dead and ten wounded. It also deals with a host of questions as to the identity of the man who allegedly shot Tupac Shakur.

This 29-page statement of probable cause offers some intriguing answers. It was written up by Compton police last September and was attached to a motion filed in February by Suge Knight's defense team as part of their attempt to overturn Knight's probation violation. Based largely on information provided to the Compton police by their gang-informants, the statement (or affidavit) gives an unverified but considerably detailed account of gang-related activity in Compton before and after the shooting of Tupac Shakur in Las Vegas on the night of Saturday, September 7th.

According to the statement of probable cause, five days after Shakur was shot, an informant with special knowledge of the activities of the Bloods -- a man identified in the statement as CRI or "confidential reliable informant" #3 --provided police with a sequence of events which suggested that the shooting in Vegas might have been the culmination of a beef that began at the Lakewood Mall in Compton. The informant told Compton police that a man named Travon Lane -- a Death Row affiliate also known as "Tray" -- was at the mall's Foot Locker in July or August of last year when he was confronted by several members of the Southside Crips. There was a scuffle during which Lane's Death Row medallion was taken from him.

Fast forward to September 7th in Las Vegas -- the night of the Tyson/Seldon fight at the MGM Grand. According to the affidavit, CRI #3 told the Compton cops that moments after the bout, Travon Lane was walking through the hotel as part of Death Row's entourage when he spotted a man later identified as Orlando Anderson. The same man, Lane thought who'd taken his medallion at the Lakewood mall two months ago. Lane pointed the man out to Shakur. Shakur confronted Anderson with the question "You from the South?" -- an apparent reference to the Southside Crips. A melee ensued -- captured on tape by MGM Grand surveillance cameras.

Little more than an hour later, as a line of Death Row cars snaked its way to a party at Knight's Club 662, a white Cadillac with California license plates -- according to one report -- pulled up to the right of Shakur and Knight's vehicle. According to the affidavit, a passenger opened fire with a Glock .40 caliber handgun, grazing Knight and critically wounding Shakur -- as members of the Death Row entourage watched from the cars behind Knight's.

In the affidavit, the informant is also said to have told Compton police he heard Travon Lane at Club 662 declaring that the shooter was the same man who'd been in the melee at the MGM Grand and that the shooter was "Keefee D's nephew." According to police, Orlando Anderson is the nephew of the man known by Compton police to be Keefee D. Both are reputed to be Southside Crips.

Back in Compton on September 9th, the day according to the affidavit that another informant noticed a late-model white Cadillac being driven into a local auto shop by Orlando Anderson's cousin-- three separate Blood sects convened at Lueders Park. The topic of discussion, according to the affidavit? The need to retaliate against the Southside Crips for the attack on Tupac Shakur. Compton police were told by their informant that five sites for drive-by shootings were chosen. Three potential targets were singled out.

At 2:58 that afternoon at a location on East Alondra, one such man -- whose name was mentioned to Las Vegas police as someone who might have been riding in the white Cadillac -- was shot in the back. The war was on.

Two days later at 9:05 on the morning of September 11th, Southside Crip Bobby Finch was gunned down on South Mayo. The next day, Vegas police told Compton cops that they'd received calls that Finch had been riding in the white Cadillac. By early morning on the 14th, five more people had been shot in what Compton police regarded as related assaults. Meanwhile, three Bloods were fired on and wounded in two separate shootings. On September 13th, the day Tupac Shakur died, two more Bloods were shot and killed by an assailant who fled on foot.

As the gang war raged, police in Compton and Las Vegas continued to receive unsubstantiated tips that "Keefee D's nephew" or " Baby Lane" -- aliases for Orlando Anderson -- had shot Tupac Shakur. On the 13th, the affidavit says, one reputed member of the Bloods identified the man who'd shot him in Compton two days earlier as Orlando Anderson. On the 20th, an eyewitness fingered Anderson as the triggerman in an April 1996 homicide. Around that same time, the affidavit states, an informant told one police officer that Anderson had been spotted with a .40 caliber Glock handgun -- a potentially significant tip, since it hadn't yet been revealed publicly that a .40 caliber Glock had been used in the attack on Shakur.

On October 2nd, as part of a gang sweep, Compton police arrested Anderson in connection with that April 1996 homicide, but the District Attorney's office declined to press charges and asked police to gather more evidence. Compton police told MTV News that Anderson remains the prime suspect in the April 1996 homicide, and charges are expected to be formally filed imminently. As for Anderson's attorney, he declined to comment on this or any other allegations contained in the affidavit. And says that he has not been informed that his client remains the prime suspect in that April 1996 homicide. He has previously denied that Anderson was in any way involved with the killing of Shakur.

While testifying under oath in Suge Knight's probation hearing, Orlando Anderson invoked the Fifth Amendment when asked if he was a member of the Crips and denied that Knight had assaulted him. Vegas police questioned Anderson briefly in October after which one Vegas cop was quoted as saying that Anderson was not a suspect in Shakur's murder. Four months later, Vegas Sgt. Kevin Manning told the Los Angeles Times that Anderson was indeed a suspect in Shakur's killing, but that the department lacks hard evidence against him. Vegas police say that since the night of the shooting they have not been able to speak to Travon Lane -- who the affidavit asserts was involved with the scuffle with Anderson at the Lakewood Mall, who pointed Anderson out to Shakur at the MGM Grand and was heard at Club 662 hours after the shooting IDing Anderson as the shooter. Efforts by MTV News to talk with Travon Lane were unsuccessful.