Police, Shakur’s entourage at odds over investigation

Five months after the slaying of rap star Tupac Shakur at a busy Las Vegas intersection, police have narrowed the list of suspects to three Los Angeles men--but unless a witness comes forward, police doubt they will ever be able to make an arrest.

Las Vegas homicide detectives said they have been stymied in their efforts to prosecute the case because of a lack of cooperation by witnesses, including rap mogul Marion “Suge” Knight and more than a dozen others in Knight’s entourage.

But Shakur’s mother and others close to the rap star are growing increasingly critical of the police investigation, contending that Las Vegas authorities made a halfhearted effort to solve the crime. Several Los Angeles-area law enforcement sources, speaking anonymously, echoed those concerns and wonder why Las Vegas detectives did not aggressively conduct follow-up interviews or ask witnesses to look at a photo lineup.

“Let me put it this way,” said Afeni Shakur, the slain rapper’s mother. “When my son was lying in the hospital in a medically induced coma, the Las Vegas police went on national television telling everybody that he was not cooperating with their investigation. It was clear to me from Day 1 that the Las Vegas police never had any interest in solving the case of my son’s murder.”

Las Vegas Metro Homicide Sgt. Kevin Manning vigorously disputed the criticism of the investigative effort.

“We are as frustrated as anybody else that we have not been able to bring the individuals who shot Tupac Shakur to justice,” Manning said. “We have suspects and we have bullets, but we still have no gun and no witnesses to identify the shooter.”

To be sure, many of those at the murder scene acknowledge that they haven’t cooperated with Las Vegas police. But three people interviewed by The Times said investigators never contacted them for follow-up interviews or asked them to view pictures of possible suspects.

And with the hindsight of five months, it is clear that Las Vegas police hampered their ability to investigate the case by their actions on the night of the killing.

Several of those at the scene told The Times they were immediately reluctant to talk to detectives on the night of the shooting because police arriving first ordered Knight and his entourage out of their cars at gunpoint and initially treated them as if they were suspects.

Police say they had no way of knowing at first who might have been involved in the shooting. But the distrust their action engendered has dogged the investigation since.

Three Suspects

Yassmyn Fula, the mother of a key witness, said, “How do the police expect witnesses to help them solve a murder when they treat the witnesses as if they were the criminals?”

Las Vegas police say their investigation now has centered on a fight that took place three hours before Shakur was gunned down on the Las Vegas Strip. Homicide detectives say their investigation has narrowed to three Los Angeles men, including Orlando Anderson, a reputed Lakewood gang member assaulted by Shakur and others Sept. 7 in the lobby of the MGM Grand Hotel.

“We consider Mr. Anderson to be a suspect in the shooting,” Manning said Monday. “But at this moment we have no direct evidence to connect him to the crime.”

Manning declined to elaborate, but sources said police believe that Anderson drove the car while another man did the shooting.

Anderson, 22, declined to talk to The Times, but his attorney, Edi M.O. Faal, denied that Anderson had anything to do with Shakur’s death.

“The important thing to remember in this case is that there is evidence that the murder victim assaulted the suspect,” Faal said. “But there is absolutely no evidence that the suspect committed any offense involving the murder victim.”

Faal added, “The reason that police questioned Mr. Anderson in October was that he was the victim of a brutal group beating led by Tupac. Because of that, it might appear that he had a motive to retaliate.”

Anderson, meanwhile, has notified Shakur’s mother that he is preparing to file a lawsuit against the slain rapper’s estate, alleging assault and battery and seeking $1.5 million in damages.

There are questions in law enforcement circles why Las Vegas authorities never filed charges against those who helped Shakur attack Anderson at the MGM--an altercation that played a pivotal role in putting Knight, the owner of Death Row Records, behind bars on a probation violation.

Manning said Las Vegas police never recommended a prosecution in the hotel beating because Anderson declined to press charges. But Faal, who said his client was traumatized and frightened after what he called a “vicious group beating,” noted that in general practice it is up to authorities--not the victim--to seek charges.

“If Mr. Faal would like to send his client in to file a report, we would be happy to take the report and pursue it,” Manning said Monday.

On the evening of Sept. 7, Shakur and Knight had gone to the Mike Tyson-Bruce Seldon heavyweight boxing match at the MGM Grand Hotel, and on their way out, Shakur and several Death Row employees attacked Anderson. The assault, as captured about 8:50 p.m. on a hotel surveillance videotape, shows Anderson being hit by as many as six men.

About three hours later, as Shakur and Knight were stopped at a red light on a crowded thoroughfare, a white Cadillac with California plates pulled up in the lane next to Knight’s BMW.

Sprayed With Bullets

According to Las Vegas police, the Cadillac contained between two and four men, one of whom stuck a handgun out of the driver’s side of the vehicle and sprayed the BMW with bullets--about a dozen in three seconds. Police say the Cadillac rolled slowly by the BMW as the shots were fired and then disappeared.

Knight, who was driving, was grazed in the head and chest. Shakur was hit four times.

The shooting took place in front of a caravan of vehicles filled with people associated with Death Row Records, including several employees as well as Shakur’s back-up trio and his bodyguard, an off-duty Orange County reserve policeman.

Knight floored his bullet-riddled BMW, made a sudden U-turn and began racing west down Flamingo Boulevard. The Death Row convoy followed Knight in making the U-turn, but quickly came to a halt as police arrived on the scene moments later--and forced those in the cars out at gunpoint.

Knight, whose face was covered in blood, tried to tell one officer that he had been shot in the head. The officer responded, according to witnesses, by pointing a gun at Knight and telling him, “If you don’t get down on your knees right now, buddy, you’re going to get shot in the f------ head again.”

Patrol officers began questioning those at the scene and called an ambulance for Shakur. Homicide detectives were called two hours later and conducted an additional round of interviews. By then, however, as one Las Vegas police source recalls, the Cadillac was “probably already across the state border.”

Shakur remained in intensive care for six days at a local hospital. Nearly a dozen members of the rap star’s entourage remained all week outside his hospital room, but investigators did not conduct follow-up interviews. Shakur died Sept. 13.

Initially, Las Vegas detectives dismissed the importance of the altercation at the MGM, saying there was no way the man who had been attacked had enough time to track down Shakur after the fight in the lobby. Las Vegas detectives came to that conclusion based on information provided them the night of the shooting, which they now know was erroneous, Manning said.

The victim in the hotel scuffle, Anderson, who was not asked his last name, address or phone number by officers at the time, was allowed to leave the MGM after he declined to press charges.

Within days, however, undercover detectives from Los Angeles were asked to view the surveillance tape and identified Anderson as an alleged Crips gang member from Lakewood.

They also identified Knight and the four Death Row employees involved in the altercation as individuals considered to be affiliated with a Bloods gang sect in Compton, sources said. Knight has repeatedly denied ever being a gang member.

By late September, law enforcement sources said, they began receiving tips that Anderson was bragging around Compton about the shooting. Faal denies that Anderson ever bragged about having anything to do with the shooting.

“Law enforcement sources in Los Angeles informed us that he [Anderson] was going around Compton bragging about his involvement in the Tupac shooting and we wanted him to continue bragging,” Manning said.

Compton Police Chief Hourie Taylor said, “We told Las Vegas police that it was worth them looking into Mr. Anderson--as well as a couple of other people that he knew--in terms of their investigation of the Tupac Shakur shooting.”

Taylor refused to name the others, but sources said two of Anderson’s relatives are believed to have been with him in Las Vegas on Sept. 7.

On Oct. 2, Anderson was one of nearly two dozen alleged gang members arrested during an early morning raid in Compton. Anderson, from whose house police confiscated bullets and other belongings, was arrested on a warrant stemming from an April slaying in Compton unrelated to Shakur’s death.

Las Vegas Police Det. Brent Becker, who participated in the raid, testified in court that he did not consider Anderson to be a suspect in Shakur’s killing at the time, but wanted to speak to him primarily about the altercation in the MGM lobby. But according to Faal and Los Angeles police sources, Becker told Anderson on Oct. 2 that he was a suspect.

“The Las Vegas detective told Mr. Anderson that he was a suspect for Shakur’s shooting while Mr. Anderson was handcuffed and sitting on his driveway,” Faal said.

Anderson was released Oct. 4 after Los Angeles prosecutors declined to file charges against Anderson for the Compton killing.

That month, Los Angeles police provided Las Vegas detectives with a photo of Anderson and two other suspects to help them create a mug folder to present to potential witnesses. In response to inquiries from the media, however, Las Vegas police continued to deny that Anderson was a suspect.

Las Vegas police now concede that they misled the press.

In November, the case suffered a major setback when Yafeu “Kadafi” Fula, a 19-year-old rapper in the car behind Shakur, was gunned down in an unrelated shooting in New Jersey.

“He was the only one who gave us the impression that he could identify the driver [of the white Cadillac],” Manning said. “We wanted to show him some photographs.”

Manning said police had been eager to interview Fula but never heard from him despite leaving messages with an attorney for Death Row.

But the rapper’s mother, Yassmyn Fula, said police had ample opportunity to interview her son during the week Shakur was in the hospital in Las Vegas. She said the only contact her son had with police after the shooting was when they handcuffed him and his friends during a search for a gun at the hospital.

Manning said police did not have a photo of the suspects during the week Fula was in Las Vegas and had no luck reaching him later.

“Why is it that the Las Vegas police keep acting like it was impossible to find my son or anyone who knew how to get ahold of him?” Fula said. “If that was true, how is it that you were able to locate me?”

Mother Criticizes Police

Several law enforcement sources said they thought it was unusual that Las Vegas detectives did not contact five other potential witnesses in the convoy to ask them to view the photos in the mug folder. Indeed, Fula was sitting in the back seat of the second vehicle--behind others with a clearer view of the shooting.

Manning said that everyone else in Shakur’s entourage told police they could not identify the assailants. Indeed, Knight told ABC-TV’s “Prime Time Live” that even if he knew who Shakur’s killer was he would not provide that information to authorities.

“When a guy says to me that he didn’t see anything, what is the point of me trying to call him back over and over again for an interview?” Manning said. “Our phone number is in the book. Anybody who wants to help us knows how to reach us.”

Detectives in other police agencies, however, said it is crucial to conduct numerous interviews with potential witnesses in order to gain their trust, particularly in a case in which police start out in an adversarial relationship with those at the crime scene.

Shakur’s mother, meantime, said she is tired of hearing the Las Vegas police blame their failure to solve the case on a lack of information provided by the rapper’s entourage.

“It is not possible for me or my son’s friends or anybody at Death Row to solve this case. We are not investigators,” Afeni Shakur said. “Investigating and solving murders is the responsibility of the police, and in my opinion, these guys have not done their job.”

Times staff writer Jeff Leeds contributed to this story.