Music3 min(s) read
Published 12:48 16 Apr 2026 GMT
One of the first responders at the scene of Tupac Shakur’s fatal shooting in 1996 has finally revealed the rapper’s last words, but sadly, they're not exactly inspirational.
Chris Carroll, a retired Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department sergeant, recounted the hip hop legend’s final moments to Vegas Seven.
Shakur, 25, was shot multiple times in a drive-by attack on September 7, 1996, after leaving a boxing match with former Death Row Records CEO Suge Knight.
The rapper and his bodyguards got into a scrap with Crips gang member Orlando Anderson, then 21, in the lobby of the MGM Grand casino.
Not long after the brawl, a white Cadillac pulled up at traffic lights beside Knight and Shakur, and a man began shooting at the pair from the back window.
Carroll, who had also attended the Mike Tyson fight, was the first officer to respond to the bloody scene and attend to the seriously wounded Shakur.
Recounting finding the injured pair, Carroll said: “I grab the car door, and I’m trying to open it, but I can’t get it open…[Knight] keeps coming up on my back, so I’m pointing my gun at him.
When he was finally able to open the car door to get to the wounded rapper, Shakur’s limp, bloody body fell out of the vehicle, “like he was leaning against the door.”
The retired cop explained: “ I grabbed him with my left arm, and he falls into me, and I’ve still got my gun in the other hand.
“He’s covered with blood, and I immediately notice that the guy’s got a ton of gold on – a necklace and other jewelry – and all of the gold is covered in blood.
“As Suge is yelling ‘Pac!,’ I look down and I realize that this is Tupac Shakur.”
In his final moments, Carroll tried desperately to get a “dying declaration” or description of the suspect who shot him, but the rapper ignored his pleas at first.
Moments before his final words, Carroll reports: “he went from struggling to speak, being noncooperative, to an ‘I’m at peace’ type of thing. Just like that… He went from fighting to ‘I can’t do it.’”
Per CNN, after asking numerous times, “Who shot you?” Carroll thought he was about to get a response when Shakur looked him in the eyes and muttered: “f*** you.”
Shakur never spoke again after letting out his final curse word to Carroll and died in hospital six days later.
The former Las Vegas cop only revealed this information in 2014, almost two decades after the rapper’s murder, because retiring gave him the freedom to speak about the homicide case without being reprimanded.
Also, he claims he kept the information to himself for so long because he didn’t want “Tupac to be a martyr or a hero because he told the cops ‘f**k you.’”
