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

and Tupac with the Mob Pirus and Orlando Anderson with the South Side Crips. (Tupac always adamantly denied any gang affiliation; police have said otherwise.)
    If the Compton PD’s account is to be believed, on September 9, 1996, even before Tupac died, three separate Piru sects convened at Lueders Park, a gang hangout in Compton, where the plan for retaliation for Tupac’s shooting was hatched. Compton police were told by their informant that five targets for drive-by shootings were chosen. At 2:58 that afternoonon East Alondra, the first retaliation shooting took place; the victim was Darnell Brim, identified by police as “one of the leaders of the Southside Crips” and alleged to be one of the men in the Cadillac from which Tupac was shot. He was shot several times, suffering injuries to his back. During the Alondra Street drive-by, a 10-year-old bystander, Lakezia McNeese, was shot and critically injured. She survived.
    On September 10, George Mack, identified as a “Leuders Park Piru,” and Johnnie Burgie were shot in front of 713 North Bradfield Street, a known hangout for Pirus. They both survived. Also on September 10, Gary Williams, brother of former Death Row Records security employee George Williams, was shot while on the corner of Pino and Bradfield streets. He, too, survived his wounds.
    On September 11, Bobby Finch was shot to death while standing outside a house on South Mayo. Compton Police told Las Vegas detectives that Finch was believed to be a passenger in the Cadillac from which Tupac was fatally injured. Finch, not a gang member himself, was a bodyguard who grew up in the same neighborhood as the Southside Crips, according to Compton Police Captain Danny Sneed.
    On September 13, Tyrone Lipscomb and David McKulin were shot at while in front of 802 South Ward. They both survived. The suspects in this case, Compton police said, were believed to be members of the Pirus. Also on September 13, Mitchell Lewis, Apryle Murph, and Frederick Boykin were shot while in front of 121 North Chester. All three survived. Three Bloods members were alleged to have done the shooting while on foot.
    All the shootings, as outlined in the Compton PD’s affidavit, were believed to be retaliatory acts following Tupac’s Las Vegas shooting.
    Two months later, the lone witness to the shooting, Yafeu Fula, was murdered in New Jersey. Six months later, East Coast superstar rapper Biggie Smalls, under contract to Bad Boy Entertainment, rival to Death Row Records, was shot to death in a drive-by shooting in Los Angeles that was eerilysimilar to the one that claimed Tupac’s life.
    Meanwhile, Death Row Records, Tupac’s label, started to unravel. Suge Knight, CEO of Death Row, jailed two months after Tupac’s shooting for a parole violation, was sentenced to nine years in prison for his role in the fight with Orlando Anderson at the MGM Grand just hours before Tupac was shot. At the time, the FBI and IRS were looking into Death Row’s books and its associations.
    In the aftermath, the slayings of the two hottest hip-hop stars stirred criticism of the rap world and made record companies uneasy, but the murders didn’t hurt sales or deter fans; it was just the opposite. Both Tupac and Biggie’s final albums went to number one on Billboard magazine’s record charts. Tupac’s last album Makaveli and Biggie’s album Life After Death ... ‘Til Death Do Us Part, both released posthumously, broke all-time sales records, generating talk that the two rap superstars were worth more dead than alive.
    The latest retaliation shooting occurred April 3, 2002, when Alton “Kungry” McDonald, 37, a former production manager for Death Row Records, was shot to death as he filled up his car at a Shell gas station in Compton. A truck pulled up and one or more people got out and opened fire. McDonald was hit several times in his upper body and died at St. Francis Medical Center in Lynwood. The killers got away. Police found large-caliber