Wake Up What Up

June 16, 1971 - September 13, 1996

Tupac's last photo, before shots...

On the night of September 7, 1996, Shakur attended the Mike Tyson–Bruce Seldon boxing match at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. After leaving the match, one of Suge's associates spotted 21-year-old Orlando "Baby Lane" Anderson, an alleged member of the Southside Crips, in the MGM Grand lobby. He told Shakur, who attacked Anderson. Shakur's entourage, as well as Suge and his followers, assisted in assaulting Anderson. The fight was captured on the hotel's video surveillance. Earlier that year, Anderson and a group of Crips had robbed a member of Death Row's entourage in a Foot Locker store, and Shakur was retaliating. After the brawl, Shakur went to rendezvous with Suge to go to Death Row-owned Club 662 (now known as restaurant/club Seven). He rode in Suge's 1996 black BMW 750iL sedan as part of a larger convoy, including many in Shakur's entourage.

At around 11:00–11:05 pm, they were halted on Las Vegas Boulevard by Metro bicycle police for playing the car stereo too loudly and not having license plates. The plates were found in the trunk of Suge's car; the party was released without being fined a few minutes later. 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 a volley of gunshots at Shakur. He was hit in the chest, pelvis, and his right hand and thigh. One of the rounds ricocheted into Shakur's right lung. Suge was hit in the head by fragmentation, though it is thought[by whom?] that a bullet grazed him. The bodyguard, Frank Alexander, stated that when he was about to ride along with the rapper in Suge'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 drove off after the assailant but he never heard from the occupants.

After arriving on the scene, police and paramedics took Suge and a mortally wounded Shakur to the University Medical Center. 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 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. Shakur's body was cremated and some of his ashes were later mixed with marijuana and smoked by members of the Outlawz.

(c) Wikipedia