MTV News 1996: 14 Shots and an Obituary

Original: “Rapper Tupac Shakur Gunned Down” · MTV News · Report by Chris Connelly, with retrospective · September 13, 1996

Doctors initially gave him a one-in-five chance. After four hits and just under a week on a ventilator in the intensive care unit of University Medical Center in Las Vegas, Tupac died on September 13, 1996. MTV devoted a long special broadcast to him that same day. It begins at the hospital, showing his mother Afeni Shakur keeping vigil and visitors like Jesse Jackson, representatives of the Nation of Islam, and Hammer.

14 Shots on Koval Lane

On location, reporter Chris Connelly reconstructs the night of September 7. It began with the Tyson versus Seldon fight at the MGM Grand, which was over in less than two minutes. Afterward, Suge Knight had actually wanted to celebrate at his Club 662. But at 11:15 p.m., a white Cadillac pulled up on the passenger side of Knight’s black BMW at the intersection of Flamingo Road and Koval Lane.

According to Connelly, 14 shots were fired. They hit Tupac twice in the chest, once in the arm, and once in the thigh. Knight turned around on a flat tire and made it to the corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and Harmon Avenue, where a bicycle patrol stopped him. As a hospital spokesman reported, Tupac’s right lung was removed. Knight himself merely told police he “heard something, but saw nothing.”

From Breakthrough to Bail

The second part of the broadcast is an obituary. It spans the arc from Digital Underground through the debut 2Pacalypse Now and the film Juice to songs like Brenda’s Got a Baby and Keep Ya Head Up. The court trials from 1993 onward, the 1994 Quad Studio shooting, and his imprisonment are not left out either. Those were followed by Me Against the World at No. 1, bail from Death Row, and All Eyez on Me. In between, director Allen Hughes remembers a thoughtful Tupac writing between takes. (The old archive page mistakenly named Ernest Dickerson here and spelled the debut “2Pacolypse”.)

A Fatal Misjudgment

From today’s perspective, a detail mentioned in passing is remarkable: although police had reviewed video of the brawl at the MGM Grand, they ruled out the participant there as a suspect.

In early October 1996, an attorney confirmed that this was Orlando Anderson. A good decade later, his uncle Duane “Keffe D” Davis spoke about his own role in the murder. On August 31, 2026, Davis was found guilty in Las Vegas, with the brawl as the motive (not final, as of October 2026).