from VIBE
February 1995
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 photog.
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?"
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