While the anniversary of Tupac’s death will mark 18 years this upcoming September, little has been revealed surrounding details of the police investigation on the 25-year-old rapper’s untimely death.
Nevada police officer Chris Carroll has recently come forward to The Vegas Seven to share his account of Tupac’s final moments at the time of his shooting, just off the Las Vegas strip on September 7, 1996.
Now in retirement, Carroll feels certain that 18 years later, a court case on the murder will probably not occur.
Carroll was the first officer to arrive to the scene when Tupac’s car was shot. At the time, Carroll was a sergeant on the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department’s bike patrol unit when he witnessed the following:
It was on Flamingo [Blvd.] that a white Cadillac with three or four men inside pulled up to the right of [Suge] Knight’s BMW. One of the men stuck a weapon out of the back window of the Caddy and fired at least 13 rounds into the side of Knight’s car, four of which pierced Shakur’s body. The Cadillac then took off south down Koval.
Knight managed to make a U-turn and turn the car around on Flamingo, weaving through traffic with two blown out tires and running traffic lights to eventually come to a halt on the Strip.
As Shakur sat bleeding in the passenger seat, the scene was utter chaos, with Carroll trying to determine who the shooter was.
Attempting to get Pac’s last dying declaration of a suspect, Carroll said,
[I was] 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. And I kept asking over and over, ‘Who did this? Who shot you?’
And he basically kept ignoring me. 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.
Asking Tupac one final time to identify the assailant:
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*ck you.’
After that, he started gurgling and slipping out of consciousness. At that point, an ambulance showed up, and he went into unconsciousness.
And there you have it. Tupac’s very last words on this earth were “f*ck you” to a cop.
I didn’t want Tupac to be a martyr or hero because he told the cops ‘f*ck you.’ I didn’t want to give him that. I didn’t want people to say, ‘Even when the chips were down, his life on the line, he still said “f*ck you.’
He still wouldn’t talk to the police. I didn’t want him to be a hero for that. And now enough time has passed, well, he’s a martyr anyway; he’s viewed as a hero anyway.
Tupac indeed remains a hero. He was a rapper concerned with the social welfare of disadvantaged urban youth, who was fearless in addressing issues of economic inequality in America.
The memory of Tupac still lives in our hearts and minds, if not more vividly now than ever.
Rest in Peace Tupac!
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