The Killing of Tupac Shakur by Cathy Scott Read Free Book Online

his report. When he was finished, Brown returned to Tupac’s private room. He tagged Tupac’s toe. With the help of a nurse, he placed Tupac’s nude body in a plastic body bag and sealed it with Coroner’s Seal No. 855971.
    But Tupac’s body wasn’t taken through the front entrance of the trauma center. Hospital personnel didn’t want a mobscene on their hands. Instead, according to a hospital security officer on duty that afternoon, Tupac’s body, on a gurney and in a body bag, was wheeled to the elevator banks in the trauma unit and taken upstairs, to the third floor. The guard said no one even noticed the gurney as attendants waited for the elevator doors to open. Once upstairs, Tupac’s body was wheeled down a hallway to a parking-lot exit at the back of the hospital. From the back parking lot, an unmarked mortuary van took his body to the medical examiner’s office three blocks away.
    Meanwhile, upon being turned away, Suge walked toward the exit door and out of the trauma unit, unable to see Tupac one last time. He was followed by the same group of men he had arrived with. They all got into Suge’s Lexus and drove away. No one spoke. Gang officers on the street appeared relieved once Suge was gone.
    Word began to circulate that the coroner had used the back entrance of the hospital to remove Tupac’s body. About the same time, Danny Boy walked to the front of the hospital to the driveway used by ambulances. He sat down on the curb with a friend and sobbed again. A crew member put his arm around him and comforted him. They stayed there for about 15 minutes.
    Some of the fans who’d been keeping the hospital vigil left for the coroner’s office, where Tupac’s autopsy was about to begin.
    “We had them [fans] at our back doors. We had them driving by. We had them calling. It got ridiculous,” said Ron Flud, who, at that point, had been the Clark County Coroner for 13 years and, before that, had been a cop with the North Las Vegas Police Department.
    Besides fans, black ministers also knocked on the coroner’s office door. The coroner explained: “We had local ministers show up and say, ‘Suge wanted us here.’ First of all, as far as coming into the office, only the next of kin has any kind of control over the body. And the only reason you let them in is to identify the body. Tupac had already been identified[by his mother]. We’re dealing with evidence, and we’re very protective as to who is going to be around. Nobody goes into the autopsy except who we control. There were requests to be there from all kinds of people – medical personnel, cops, firefighters. We said, ‘Why?’”
    Flud, of course, would not let them or anyone else in, other than detectives and coroner’s office personnel. Allowing them in was against department policy.
    Reporters and photographers, meanwhile, waited outside the trauma unit for more than two hours for the hospital spokesman, Dale Pugh, to issue an official statement that Tupac had died. The media had been telephoned by Dale’s office saying that Tupac had succumbed to his wounds and was dead. Reporters and photographers rushed to the hospital.
    One of those waiting outside was Kevin Powell, a freelance rap journalist on assignment for Rolling Stone magazine. Kevin had befriended Tupac after interviewing him many times over several years. Powell looked sad as he stood by, notebook at his side, silently watching the group of mourners. Powell, a cast member on the MTV original series “The Real World” in 1992 and host and writer for MTV’s documentary “Straight From The Hood,” had earlier described Tupac as his friend and said he didn’t think Tupac was going to die. Powell called him tough, especially after surviving a shooting two years earlier in Manhattan. The Tupac Kevin knew was a fighter.
    Reporters continued to wait, as they’re accustomed to doing at crime scenes, hospitals, and courtrooms. Finally, they were told that Dale Pugh wouldn’t be