The night of September 7, 1996 is a night that has become one of the most infamous nights in the history of Nevada. The MGM Grand in Las Vegas was the host of the Bruce Seldon and Mike Tyson boxing match. Anytime Mike Tyson boxed in Las Vegas it was a big event. On this night Tyson did not disappoint as he won via 1st round knockout. Typically this would have been the big headline of the night, but instead it was a footnote to a bigger story. Unfortunately the story that makes this night live on in infamy is the shooting of Tupac Shakur. Six days later, September 13th, 1996, Tupac Shakur passed away as a result of the shooting. Whenever a pop culture figure passes it is a moment people never forget. Why this one stands out to many is not only did we lose a cultural icon but we don’t have answers to who committed this crime. There have been books, television shows, documentaries, movies, etc. that have covered this topic. We will most likely never know who killed Tupac Shakur for certain as there are many theories behind who pulled the trigger that night.
What do we know for certain about the night of September 7th, 1996? As stated in the beginning of this blog Tupac Shakur and his entourage attended the Mike Tyson fight at the MGM Grand. After the boxing fight another fight occurred at the MGM Grand. This one however wasn’t sanctioned and was an all-out brawl inside of the casino. Footage of this incident can be found on YouTube. This brawl involved Tupac Shakur and his entourage getting into it with a Crips gang member. Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson was the Crips gang member that was attacked by Tupac Shakur and his entourage. Anderson had a previous run in with Shakur’s entourage thus the reason why he was attacked inside the MGM Grand.
After the altercation ended Shakur left the MGM Grand. Shakur entered a vehicle as a passenger with record producer “Suge” Knight who was the driver of the vehicle. The duo was at a red-light when a car pulled up to the passenger side of the car. Gunshots were fired as Shakur was struck with four bullets. The car drove away leaving Shakur and Knight at the streetlight with bullets sprayed all along the passenger side of the duos vehicle.
Now the mystery begins. Who shot Tupac? Many believe that Anderson was the one who shot Tupac. Anderson passed away a few years later and said he had nothing to do with it. Could it be other Crips? Maybe but nothing says for certain that it involved any gang member. There are many theories about who could have done it. Las Vegas Metro PD conducted the investigation and all these years later nobody can say for certain who shot Tupac.
How would somebody report an incident like this in their UCR workbook? Let’s take a look to see what would the best way to submit this homicide. First we would go to the “SHR-Murder, Non-negligent” tab since this was a non-negligent homicide. Then we would click on “add new incident” which will pull up the first step. We select on the drop down menu how many victims and offenders there were. In this case, Knight was hit by bullets but did not pass away from his wounds. Shakur passed away as a result of the shooting so he would be the only victim. Police investigations have not shown or proven if there was only one offender or multiple offenders so we would mark that as unknown.
The next step in the reporting process is entering victim information. Based on information gathered about Tupac Shakur we would put his age at 25, sex as male, race as black, and not of Hispanic origin for the ethnicity. Since we said the offender(s) were unknown step 3 of 4 has the boxes filled out as unknown for the offender(s). This leads us to the fourth and final step which is to enter situation information for each victim and offender. The type of firearm is debated. Since we do not know for certain who the offender was then we do not know for certain the relationship between the victim and offender. Some would debate that the circumstances are gang related but we do not know for certain if the Crips or any other gang was involved so the circumstances are unknown.
Will we ever find out more information about the killing of Tupac Shakur? Maybe. It is hard to say that we will ever know for certain what happened on the night of September 7th, 1996. We lost an extremely talented artist that night and to this day people all across the globe still listen to raps that Tupac Shakur gave us.
Comments