Vegas the night
of the shooting
and had given his
nephew the gun.
“The strength of

the lead was really
based on Keefe D’s
confession about
being involved in the
murder and giving

a gun to his nephew
Orlando,” Kading
said. He revealed this
information in a book he
wrote in 2011 entitled,
Murder Rap: The Untold
Story of the Biggie Smalls
& Tupac Shakur Murder
Investigations.

Before the shooting,
video surveillance footage
captured Shakur, in the MGM
lobby following the Mike Tyson
fight, getting into an altercation
with Anderson. Shakur’s entourage
immediately comes to his aid and
assaults Anderson. The impetus for
revenge had been set. “If you beat up a
guy like that, you better have your head
on a swivel because he’s going to come
back looking for ya, and that’s exactly
what happened,” said retired Las Vegas
Metro Police sergeant, Chris Carroll in a
September 2021 interview with KTNV.
Anderson was later killed in an unrelated
shooting in May 1998.

Chris Carroll was on bike patrol duty;
and the first policeman at the scene following
the Shakur shooting. He recalled when he
arrived, it was chaos. He remembered Suge
Knight trying to approach him, but another cop
intervened so Carroll could focus on Shakur
sitting in the passenger seat (Carroll was not
aware at the time the passenger was Shakur).
Carroll stated when he opened the passenger
door; Shakur had slumped out of the car: “So,
| grabbed him with my left hand lowered him
to the pavement, and | could see immediately
that he had been shot multiple times. There
was a lot of blood all over his torso. | knew he
was in bad shape.”

Carroll then attempted to get Shakur
to speak, and obtain any information about
what had happened. Carroll noticed blood
was coming out of the rapper’s mouth.

“| looked at him and asked, ‘[Who] shot
you?’ He was trying to get breath together,
and | thought | was actually going to get
some cooperation,” he said. Then Carroll
remembers Shakur staring at him for a few
seconds before saying—what turned out

to be the rapper’s last words, “Fuck you!”
Shakur’s eyes then rolled back as he began
to gurgle before losing consciousness.

He went into surgery at UMC, but never
regained consciousness. Shakur was taken
off life support six days later.

Twenty-five years after Shakur’s death,
some Las Vegas residents say the shooting of
Shakur ultimately changed the perception of

 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
   
  
   
  
 

  
   

 
 

6¢

  

22

’'m not saying I’m going to
rule the world or I’m going
to change the world. But |
guarantee that | will spark
the brain that will change the
world and that is our job.

-Tupac Shakur, during an

  

MTV interview in 1994

 

 
 
 

 
  
 
 
 
 

 

Las Vegas being

a safe place. “This

was a drive-by shooting,
where he was murdered on
The Strip," said Mark Hall Patton,

a retired Clark County historian. “That
sort of thing doesn’t happen in Las Vegas,
and it was something that really shook up the
community and shook up the image of being
in Vegas.”

But despite the violent manner in which
Shakur died; it will not overshadow his legacy
or the impact he made with his music—which
continues to resonate with fans worldwide. He
has received numerous posthumous honours.
In March 2002, Shakur was inducted into the
Hip-Hop Hall of Fame. In December 2010,
Rolling Stone named Shakur in its list of the
100 Greatest Artists of All Time. In April 2017,
he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall
of Fame—in his first year of eligibility. Notably,
the Tupac Amaru Shakur Foundation, Inc.
(TASF) was established by Afeni Shakur
in 1997. Its mission and goals are to bring
quality arts training to young people that
include the following disciplines: acting, vocal
technique, creative writing, poetry and spoken
word, dance and stage set design.

Like James Dean, Shakur died young and
tragically. He was taken away at the prime of
his career at age 25; ensuring his immortality.
Certainly, his death ultimately robbed the
public of an even greater body of work in
both music and film. Shakur’s fans can only
wonder what could have been, and perhaps

 
 
 

 

  
 

 

 

 

 

 

his legacy could be interpreted as one of
promise unfulfilled.

Michael “Mike P” Perry, a local DJ at
Hot 97.5 in Las Vegas, says Shakur was
the voice for his generation. “The reason
why [Tupac’s legacy] had lasting power is
because he connected [with people],” he said
in an interview with KTNV. “When you speak
from the heart, and you speak the truth—you
connect with people. And | think his greatest
attribute was his ability to communicate—and
show a side of unselfishness.”

Lastly, Greg Kading states that although
there will not be any judicial justice for the
murder of Tupac Shakur, there is indeed
some closure. “If you are looking for
closure, all the facts and the evidence are
there to give you a clear understanding
of what happened and why it happened,”
he said. “And then the fact that Orlando
Anderson died in the same manner that
Tupac died, it’s almost the perfect justice.”

  

   
   
  
  
  
   
  
   
  
   
  
 
   
  
  
    
   
 
 

   

Illustration by Udeshi Seneviratne