Since before the day
he was born, Tupac Shakur has battled "the system"-but
never so dramatically as in the last 48 hours of November. On the
29th, a Manhattan jury had convened to deliberate charges of sodomy,
sexual abuse, and weapons possession against Tupac, 23, and his
codefendant, Charles Fuller, 24. They stood accused of molesting
a 19-year-old woman in Tupac's $750-a-night, 38th-floor Parker Meridien
Hotel suite on November 18, 1993. After the first day of deliberations,
Tupac left for a publicity stop in Harlem, then went on to Times
Square's Quad Recording Studio to record a track with Uptown Records'
Little Shawn. Facing a maximum 25-year sentence, Tupac knew it might
be his last recording session for some time.
At 12:20 a.m., Tupac
was running more than an hour late when he and his three-man entourage
swept past a black man sitting on a desk in the entranceway of the
office building where Quad is located. The man got up from the desk
as two confederates (also black) came in the door, and the three
followed Tupac and his crew to the elevator, pulled out guns, and
hollered, "Give up the jewelry, and get on the floor!"
While his friends lay on the gray stone floor, Tupac cursed at the
holdup men and lunged for one of the guns. The rapper was shot at
least four times. His manager Freddie Moore was hit once. The robbers
nabbed $5,000 worth of Moore's jewelry, as well as Tupac's $30,000
diamond ring and $10,000 in gold chains. They left Tupac's diamond-encrusted
gold Rolex.
Moore gave chase, collapsing
in front of a strip club next door. His friends dragged the severely
wounded Tupac into the elevator and up to the eighth-floor studio
to administer first aid. Tupac's first call was reportedly to his
mom, Afeni Shakur, in Atlanta; then he called 911.
When the cops showed
up, Tupac saw some familiar faces. Two of the first four police
officers on the scene were William Kelly and Joseph Kelly (no relation),
and "seconds later, Officer Craig McKernan arrived. McKernan
had supervised the two Kellys in Tupac's arrest at the Parker Meridien
and had just testified at the rape trial. "Hi, Officer McKernan,"
Shakur sputtered, lying naked in a pool of his own blood. "Hey,
Tupac, you hang in there," McKernan responded, as an EMS team
secured a brace around Tupac's neck and strapped him to a board.
The stretcher didn't fit into the elevator, so he had to be propped
upright, blood streaming down from his wounds. McKernan helped carry
him out past a waiting photographer. "I can't believe you're
taking my picture on a stretcher," Tupac groaned, flipping
off the photographer.
Tupac was rushed to
Bellevue Hospital. "He was hit by a low-caliber missile,"
says Dr. Leon Pachter, chief of Bellevue's trauma department. "Had
it been a high-caliber missile, he'd have been dead." Tupac
continued to bleed heavily all day, so at 1:30 p.m., Pachter and
a 12-doctor team operated on the damaged blood vessel high in his
right leg. At 4 p.m., he was out of surgery. At 6:45 p.m., against
the vociferous complaints of his doctors, he checked himself out.
"I haven't seen anybody in my 25-year professional career leave
the hospital like this," says Dr. Pachter. Afeni, who had flown
up from Atlanta, wheeled the heavily bandaged Tupac out the back
door, fighting through a crowd of reporters.
The next day, Tupac
made a surprise appearance in the Manhattan courtroom where his
fate was being decided. He was wheeled in by Nation of Islam bodyguards,
his charmed Rolex on his right wrist, his left wrist wrapped in
gauze, and his bandaged head and leg covered by a wool-knit Yankees
hat and a black Nike warm-up suit.
With his friends-including
actors Mickey Rourke" and Jasmine Guy-rallied around, Tupac
sat through the morning session before his right leg went numb.
He then went uptown and secretly checked into Metropolitan Hospital
Center on East 97th Street under the name of Bob Day.
Several hours later,
the jury came back with verdicts on Tupac and Fuller: guilty of
fondling the woman against her will-sexual abuse-but innocent on
the weightier sodomy and weapon charges. A few jurors argued for
full acquittal and viewed the verdict as a compromise. "There
was a very strong feeling that there just was not enough evidence,"
says juror Richard Devitt.
"We're ecstatic
that the jury found that there was almost no merit to these charges
whatsoever," said Tupac's beaming lawyer, Michael Warren. He
plans to appeal the sexual abuse conviction. Sentencing was delayed
due to Tupac's condition, and he remained free on $25,000 bail.
For the second time
in eight weeks, Tupac had beaten a felony rap. On October 7, in
Atlanta, Fulton County DA Louis Slaton dropped the aggravated assault
charges filed against Tupac on October 31, 1993. Tupac and his posse
had shot two off-duty police officers in the buttocks and abdomen,
but witnesses told the DA that Tupac and company had fired in self-defense
after Officer Mark Whitwell fired at them. Whitwell resigned from
the force seven months after the shooting.
Some conspiracy theorists
leaped to the conclusion that Tupac had been set up and that the
"robbery" was a payback for his perceived attacks on police;
others concocted a revenge plot by the rape accuser. Tupac's lawyer
fanned the flames, citing his' client's exaggerated suspicion of
cops to explain his flight from the hospital.I The lawyer rejects
the notion that this was a simple robbery: "These circumstances
give rise for a reasonable person to raise an eyebrow."
The shooting of a young
black man has rarely generated so much attention. "I hope people
realize that the black male is under attack," says Nation of
Islam minister Conrad Muhammad, who was on hand at the courthouse.
"This is a wake-up call to the young men in the music industry.
You have a moment onstage, a moment before the world-what will you
do with it?"
