True Crime/Paranormal/Conspiracy Stories Part VI

Life and Death of Tupac Shakur Part II

1993 shooting in Atlanta

On October 31, 1993, Shakur was arrested in Atlanta for shooting two off-duty police officers, brothers Mark Whitwell and Scott Whitwell. The Atlanta police claimed the shooting occurred after the brothers were almost struck by a car carrying Shakur while they were crossing the street with their wives. As they argued with the driver, Shakur's car pulled up and he shot the Whitwells in the buttocks and the abdomen. However, there are conflicting accounts that the Whitwells were harassing a black motorist and uttered racial slurs. According to some witnesses, Shakur and his entourage had fired in self-defense as Mark Whitwell shot at them first.

Shakur was charged with two counts of aggravated assault. Mark Whitwell was charged with firing at Shakur's car and later with making false statements to investigators. Scott Whitwell admitted to possessing a gun he had taken from a Henry County police evidence room. Prosecutors ultimately dropped all charges against both parties. Mark Whitwell resigned from the force seven months after the shooting. Both brothers filed civil suits against Shakur; Mark Whitwell's suit was settled out of court, while Scott Whitwell's $2 million lawsuit resulted in a default judgment entered against the rapper's estate in 1998.

1994 Quad Studios shooting

On November 30, 1994, while in New York recording verses for a mixtape of Ron G, Shakur was repeatedly distracted by his beeper. Music manager James "Jimmy Henchman" Rosemond, reportedly offered Shakur $7,000 to stop by Quad Studios, in Times Square, that night to record a verse for his client Little Shawn. Shakur was unsure, but agreed to the session as he needed the cash to offset legal costs. He arrived with Stretch and one or two others. In the lobby, three men robbed and beat him at gunpoint; Shakur resisted and was shot. Shakur speculated that the shooting had been a set-up.

Against doctor's advice, Shakur checked out of Metropolitan Hospital Center a few hours after surgery and secretly went to the house of the actress Jasmine Guy to recuperate. The next day, Shakur arrived at a Manhattan courthouse bandaged in a wheelchair to receive the jury's verdict for his sexual abuse case. Shakur spent the next few weeks being cared for by his mother and a private doctor at Guy's home. The Fruit of Islam and former members of the Black Panther Party stood guard to protect him.

Setup accusations involving the Notorious B.I.G.

In a 1995 interview with Vibe, Shakur accused Sean Combs, Jimmy Henchman, and the Notorious B.I.G, – who were at Quad Studios at the time – among others, of setting up or being privy to the November 1994 robbery and shooting. Vibe alerted the names of the accused. The accusations were significant to the East-West Coast rivalry in hip-hop; in 1995, months after the robbery, Combs and B.I.G. released the track "Who Shot Ya?", which Shakur took as a mockery of his shooting and thought they could be responsible, so he released a diss song, "Hit 'Em Up", in which he targeted B.I.G., Combs, their record label, Junior M.A.F.I.A., and at the end of "Hit 'Em Up", he mentions rivals Mobb Deep and Chino XL.

In March 2008, Chuck Philips, in the Los Angeles Times, reported on the 1994 ambush and shooting. The newspaper later retracted the article since it relied partially on FBI documents later discovered forged, supplied by a man convicted of fraud. In June 2011, convicted murderer Dexter Isaac, incarcerated in Brooklyn, issued a confession that he had been one of the gunmen who had robbed and shot Shakur at Henchman's order. Philips then named Isaac as one of his own, retracted article's unnamed sources.

Other criminal or civil cases

1991 Oakland Police Department lawsuit

On October 17, 1991, two Oakland Police Department officers stopped Shakur for jaywalking at a downtown intersection. According to Shakur, officers Alex Boyovic and Kevin Rogers asked him for his ID and pressed him about his name before choking him, throwing him to the ground and slamming his head on the concrete. Shakur filed a $10 million lawsuit against the officers for police brutality. The case was settled for about $43,000. It was later revealed that this incident was the onset of Shakur's autoimmune disease alopecia, which led him to shave his head bald.