Photo: VALERIE MACON/AFP/Getty Images
Tupac Shakur was riding in a black BMW with Death Row Records founder Marion “Suge” Knight when a white Cadillac sedan pulled up and fired on Shakur’s car. Knight only received a graze on the head, but Shakur took multiple hits.
Although Shakur’s killer was never identified, some believe Orlando Anderson, a member of the Los Angeles Southside Crips gang, was responsible.
Earlier in the night, before the Mike Tyson-Bruce Seldon heavyweight fight, Anderson had been attacked in the lobby of the MGM Grand Hotel by a group from Death Row Records, including Suge Knight.
When a videotape of the attack surfaced, Knight, who was on parole at the time, had to return to prison to serve a nine-year sentence. In view of suspicion of revenge as a motive, Shakur’s mother filed a lawsuit against Anderson for her son’s death; but the case was never solved because Anderson was shot to death in May 1998 in a shooting outside a car wash in Los Angeles.
Shakur had been involved in a series of violent encounters before the Las Vegas shooting. In 1993, he was convicted of assault and battery after an attack on a music video producer. That same year, a limousine driver claimed that Shakur had severely beaten him.
In 1995, while on trial for sexually abusing a young woman in a hotel room, Shakur was shot five times during an alleged robbery at a New York recording studio, later convicted of sexual assault.
In 1996, he was sent to prison for violating probation and failing to complete his mandatory community service.
Before his death, Shakur was also charged in a pair of civil lawsuits.. When Ronald Ray Howard shot and killed a Texas state trooper after listening to Shakur’s songs in 1993, the cop’s widow sued Shakur for manufacturing and distributing music that allegedly incited “imminent illegal action.”
In October 1994, two 17-year-olds in Milwaukee killed a police officer in a sniper attack after claiming Shakur’s music had “driven them crazy.”
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