The Unsolved Murder of Tupac Shakur
Trigger Warning: Mention of sexual assault.
On September 7th, 1996, rapper Tupac Shakur was shot multiple times during a night out in Las Vegas. After attending the Mike Tyson vs. Bruce Seldon boxing match, friends Suge Knight and Shakur left the match, with Knight driving. Notoriously, a photo would be taken, not realizing what would happen minutes after. But who was Tupac Shakur, and how did we get to this moment where a rising 25-year-old man’s life would be taken?
Tupac Shakur was born Lesane Parish Crooks on June 16th, 1971, to a single mother, Afeni, in East Harlem. He would be renamed Tupac at age one after an Incan revolutionary, Tupac Amaru II, was killed by the Spanish revolutionary in Peru in 1781. His mother eventually married, and Shakur gained a stepbrother and half-sister there.
Shakur’s parents, Afeni (born Alice) and his father, Billy Garland, were members of the Black Panther Party in New York. Before his birth, his mother was acquitted of over 100 charges. Tupac’s “Shakur” last name came from his stepfather, who would later adopt that as his last name.
