A former Las Vegas Metropolitan PD officer is recounting the night rapper Tupac Shakur was gunned down on the Strip following a Mike Tyson fight at the MGM. Veteran officer Chris Carroll told VegasSeven.com that he was the first officer on the scene after receiving a call about the shooting.
Carroll also said he held the dying rapper in his arms after pulling him from the vehicle and heard Shakur utter his final words: "F**k you."
On that fateful Sept. 7 day almost two decades ago, Carroll was a bike officer patrolling the Vegas Strip ahead of the Tyson fight. The officer told VegasSeven.com that he had a feeling something terrible was going to happen.
"Whenever Mike Tyson would have a fight, it would be like the Super Bowl of the pimp/whore/gangster crowd," he said. "And a lot of these people aren't even going to the fight. There would be gangsters all up and down the Strip, in the hotel, everywhere. And, of course, since the fight was at the MGM, that was the nucleus of where everything was happening."
"The night was just starting, and you could just feel in the air that bad stuff was going to happen," Carroll continued. "Even when it was calm, it was like the calm before the storm."
He recalled how he was at the MGM for the fight and left afterwards heading back to the Strip to continue his patrolling. As he left the building, Carroll was unaware that Shakur had gotten into a fight with a man named Orlando Anderson, who was a member of a gang that rivaled the one Shakur was reportedly associated with.
According to VegasSeven.com, the rapper was not questioned by MGM security and allowed to leave the building. Anderson reportedly refused medical attention and also left the building. Tensions were high.
According to reports, witnesses saw a white Cadillac with three or four men inside pull alongside the BMW Tupac was in. The 25-year-old was riding in the passenger seat; Suge Knight was driving. The website reports that the shooter fired about 13 rounds into the passenger side of the car and four of those bullets hit Shakur.
At least one hit Suge in the back of the skull. Carroll said he was the first officer to arrive at the chaotic scene and after getting the situation somewhat under control, he went to tend to the victim.
"So I'm looking at Tupac, and he's trying to yell back at Suge, and I'm asking him, 'Who shot you? What happened? Who did it?' And he was just kind of ignoring me. He was making eye contact with me here and there, but he's trying to yell at Suge," Carroll said.
"And then I saw in his face, in his movements, all of a sudden in the snap of a finger, he changed. And he went from struggling to speak, being noncooperative, to an 'I'm at peace' type of thing. Just like that."
When Carroll noticed Shakur's change, he said he tried to find out one last time who was responsible for the shooting.
"And that's when I looked at him and said one more time, 'Who shot you?'" Carroll said. "He looked at me and he took a breath to get the words out, and he opened his mouth, and I thought I was actually going to get some cooperation. And then the words came out: 'F**k you.'"
Shakur was taken to University Medical Center but died six days later on Sept. 13. He was 25. Carroll said Las Vegas police investigated the murder but never found out who shot and killed the rapper.
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