Flamingo Road and Koval Lane: The Crime Scene Without a Memorial

Location: Intersection of East Flamingo Road / Koval Lane, Paradise (Clark County), Nevada Setting: A few minutes’ walk east of the Las Vegas Strip, at the hotel that was named Maxim in 1996 and is The Westin Las Vegas today Event: September 7, 1996, around 11:15 p.m.: Shots fired at Tupac Shakur

Between hotel driveways, turn lanes, and the traffic east of the Strip, nothing official at the corner of Flamingo Road and Koval Lane commemorates the night of September 7, 1996. No bronze plaque and no sign indicate that Tupac Shakur was shot here. People remember anyway: on two ordinary utility poles that fans have filled with lyrics, names, and candles for years. This page describes the location as it was then and how it looks today.

East of the Strip: Paradise Instead of Las Vegas

East Flamingo Road runs from west to east across Las Vegas Boulevard. Turning east from the Strip, you reach Koval Lane after a few hundred meters-a side street running south parallel to the Boulevard. From here, it is not far to the MGM Grand, where the evening had begun for Tupac and Death Row.

Strictly speaking, the crime scene is not located in the city of Las Vegas. Like most of the Strip, the area belongs to the unincorporated town of Paradise in Clark County. That is more than a formal technicality: an official memorial would not fall under the jurisdiction of the Las Vegas City Council, but rather the county administration.

Directly at the intersection in 1996 stood the Maxim Hotel, a smaller casino hotel dating from 1977. In 2002, it was sold, completely remodeled, and reopened in November 2003 as the Westin Casuarina. Today the property operates as The Westin Las Vegas; its casino has been closed since 2017.

Red Light at 11:15 p.m.: Shots from the Cadillac

Around 11:10 p.m., the black BMW stopped at the red light at the corner of Koval Lane, en route to Club 662. At the wheel sat Suge Knight, with Tupac in the passenger seat. Through the open window, Tupac was still speaking with female passengers in an adjacent car.

Around 11:15 p.m., a white Cadillac pulled up to the right of the BMW. Shots were fired from the back seat of the car, and Tupac was hit four times. The Cadillac immediately turned onto Koval Lane and escaped; Suge turned the BMW around and steered the car back toward the Strip on shot-out tires.

The details of the crime can be found on the page The 1996 Las Vegas Shooting, the vehicle is documented under The BMW 750iL, and the run-up to the evening is described in The MGM Grand Brawl.

The Street Corner Becomes a Place of Mourning

In the days immediately following Tupac’s death on September 13, 1996, fans were already laying flowers at the intersection. Because there was no official, public memorial service, the street corner transformed into a spontaneous place of farewell for many.

The central major event of those weeks did not take place in Las Vegas: on September 22, 1996, the Nation of Islam gathered the scene in New York for the “Hip-Hop Day of Atonement.”

Two Utility Poles Bear the Messages

What visitors find today as a memorial site are two utility poles near the spot where the BMW stood at the traffic light back then. They are covered in marker messages, stickers, names, and song lyrics, accompanied occasionally by flowers, photos, and candles. In 2021, the blog Vital Vegas described how the poles are painted over every one to two years-only to fill up again within a short time. Roadside America, a directory of roadside attractions, lists the site simply as “Where Tupac was Shot.”

The poles are not a memorial in any formal sense. Nobody maintains them officially, there is neither a plaque nor a sign, and their appearance is determined by the timing of the last coat of paint. It is precisely this circumstance that makes them authentic to many visitors: what can be read here was left by fans, not by an agency.

Mobsters in the Museum, Two Poles at the Intersection

For years, people have debated why Las Vegas does not officially commemorate Tupac. In 2021, the author of Vital Vegas called for a proper monument, pointing to a paradox: the city honors historical mobsters like Bugsy Siegel with exhibits and restaurants, yet leaves the crime scene of one of the most famous crimes in music history completely unmarked. On the 26th anniversary of his death in 2022, the local podcast City Cast Las Vegas took up the topic. The guest was DJ Warren Peace, who was part of Death Row’s street team in 1996 and was waiting at Club 662 that night for Tupac to arrive.

In September 2026, shortly after Duane “Keffe D” Davis was found guilty, an online petition called on the Las Vegas City Council to erect a memorial at the intersection. However, because the site lies in Clark County, the initiative is directed at the wrong administration; as of the editorial deadline, the petition had barely any supporters. No official reaction from the city or county is known (as of October 2026).

The Guilty Verdict Overshadows the 30th Anniversary

On milestone anniversaries, fans gather at the intersection. For the 20th anniversary of his death in September 2016, broadcaster KOLO-TV spoke with visitors paying their respects at the corner of Flamingo and Koval; one fan from Baltimore remarked that Tupac’s music had been a prophecy of his own life.

The 30th anniversary in September 2026 was overshadowed by the trial of Duane Davis, which had ended two weeks earlier in a guilty verdict. The verdict is not final, and sentencing is scheduled to be announced on October 13, 2026; more on this on the page The Trial of Duane Davis.

What Visitors Should Keep in Mind

The intersection is freely accessible and easily reachable on foot from the Strip. A few practical pointers for visiting:

• Sidewalk, not roadway. Flamingo Road has multiple lanes and heavy traffic. Photos belong on the sidewalk, never in the street or on the median.
• No signage on site. There is no sign. Landmarks for orientation are the inscribed poles and the hotel on the corner.
• Residents and hotel guests. For many people here, this is just an ordinary street corner. Loud music or blocking hotel driveways disrupts everyday life.
• What you leave behind. The messages on the poles are painted over regularly. Anyone wishing to leave something behind will find that flowers are the option that creates work for no one.

The Other Stops of the Night

The intersection marks only one point of a long evening. The MGM Grand, the Luxor hotel where Tupac changed clothes, the corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and Harmon Avenue where the BMW ultimately ended up stranded, and University Medical Center, where Tupac died six days later, belong to it just as much.

How those days unfolded is described on the page The Last Week; what Tupac said in the minutes after the shooting is documented under Last Words.