Friends offer differing reports about the rapper’s condition in hospital
There have been conspiracy theories surrounding Tupac Shakur‘s death for decades but as today would have been the rapper’s 51st birthday, many online are exploring the apparent inconsistencies in the stories of his final days – with some left convinced that he’s still alive.
The 25-year-old rapper was shot on September 7, 1996, during a drive-by attack in Las Vegas, Nevada, suspected to have been carried out by Orlando Anderson, who was ultimately murdered before ever being charged, along with Duane “Keefe D” Davis, who later confessed to being an accomplice.
Tupac was rushed to hospital shortly after the attack with four bullet wounds to his chest and further injuries to his arms and thigh. Doctors managed to keep him alive for six days but according to multiple testimonies from those who were there at his bedside, the period between the hit and his death remains unclear.
Officer Chris Carroll, now a retired sergeant with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department who was first on the scene, claimed in an interview with VladTV that the East Harlem rapper lost consciousness after he pulled him from the car which was on its way to Death Row Records boss Suge Knight‘s Club 622 at the time of the shooting.
However, despite Carroll’s claims that he wasn’t “acknowledging [his] presence” whilst asking who shot him, according to members of his entourage who were at his bedside holding a constant vigil hoping the rapper would pull through, Shakur was laughing and joking right before his death.
Speaking in the documentary entitled Who Shot Biggie & Tupac, the former Death Row Records boss Knight said, “I mean, when I left that hospital, me and Pac were laughing and joking”, adding, “I don’t see how somebody can turn from doing well, to doing bad.”
Knight was one of several who visited the rap icon while he was hospitalised, including fellow West Coast legend Snoop Dogg who told Logan Paul he fainted at the sight of his friend and peer lying critical in bed on an episode of his podcast earlier this year.
Knight (real name Marion Hugh Knight Jr.), who has long been accused of orchestrating the murder of Notorious B.I.G. at the height of the East Coast-West Coast rivalry, has been vocal on multiple occasions about the suspicious elements surrounding his death.
Knight went on to be imprisoned for a fifth time after he was arrested for manslaughter back in 2015 and during an interview with Ice-T and American broadcast journalist Soledad O’Brien on the phone in LA County prison a couple of years later, he remarked: “When ‘Pac died, if he really did…”
After O’Brien followed up by asking if he truly thought he still might be alive, the former music exec responded: “With Pac… you never know”.
Knight was also injured after one of the several bullets fired from the white Cadillac into Pac’s black BMW SUV grazed his head.
Elsewhere, his fiancé Kidada Jones told Vanity Fair that Pac woke up after she played “Vincent” by Don McLean on a CD player, at which point he managed to open his eyes. She reportedly heard shuffling under his bedsheets after asking: “If you can hear me, move your feet”.
Jones also said he managed to nod after she asked, “Do you know I love you? Do you know we all love you?”
Regardless of what you believe, it has never stopped the millions that still believe that the rapper who ended is career under the moniker of Makaveli (inspired by the famous philosopher who faked his death) is “Still Ballin”, citing everything from an inaccurate coroners report and record of his driving license to the type of shoes he was wearing at the time of the incident.
A confirmed killer has never been found. All we know is that his death will forever be shrouded in intrigue and controversy.
Related links:
- Lil Wayne pulls out of headlining Strawberries & Creem after Home Office bans him from entering UK
- Homeless man in California was actually Elvis Presley, according to conspiracy theorists
- Ezra Miller taunts police with cryptic tweet and then deletes social media as court struggles to locate actor
