The only living witness to Tupac Shakur’s death has shared new details about the rapper’s last hours.
Former Death Row Records CEO Marion “Suge” Knight, 60, was driving Shakur when they were wounded in the drive-by shooting on Sept. 7, 1996.
After Knight and Shakur were rushed to the University Medical Center of Southern Nevada, Shakur allegedly asked Knight to kill him, Shakur told People.
Shakur was afraid that if he survived his injuries, he would be imprisoned for a brawl with a Crip gang member inside a casino hours before he was shot. For Shakur, suicide was out of the question because he believed it would preclude him from going to heaven. So, he asked his confidant, Knight claimed. “Kill me. Shoot me,” Shakur allegedly begged him.
Shakur suggested ways to create evidence that it was a mercy kill and not a murder, for Knight’s sake, such as writing it in a will, capturing it on camera, or recording a song about it. Still, Knight refused.
Shakur’s mother, Afeni, was willing to honor her son’s wishes for a quick and painless death, Knight claimed, alleging that she gave her son pills to help his suffering.
When the doctors came into the room to revive Tupac, Knight claims Afeni said: “Don’t ever do that again. If he’s having complications, don’t touch him. Don’t bring him back. Let him go.”
Afeni eventually decided to cease her son’s medical treatment, and Tupac was pronounced dead at 4:03 p.m. on Sept. 13, six days after he was shot.
Knight claims Afeni told him to cremate Tupac as soon as he died. Knight initially pushed back, saying Tupac wanted a wake where his rapper friends would “kiss [him] head to toe,” recalling a lyric from his song, “Life Goes On.”
Knight claims that Afeni proceeded to curse him out. “She gave me one of those mama looks, like, ‘Shut your a– up and do what I said,’“ he told People.
It was done. That night, Shakur’s closest friends honored the 25-year-old rapper in their own way, some allegedly rolling his cremated ashes into a blunt and smoking it. That is, except for Knight, who was not allowed to because he was on probation.
Knight says he still misses his friend, so much so that he has long avoided listening to the rapper’s songs since the murder. “When Pac died, I saw the whole sky turn a reddish orange,” Knight told People.
In the almost 30 years since Shakur’s death, rumors have swirled about an alleged conspiracy behind the shooting. Duane “Keefe D” Davis, 60, was arrested for Shakur’s death in Sept. 2023, and his trial is scheduled for Feb. 2026. Davis alleged that Sean “Diddy” Combs, who was the head of rival Bad Boy Records, ordered the hit on Shakur, offering Davis $1 million in exchange, a claim that Combs has vehemently denied.
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