November 30, 1994, Tupac Shakur was ambushed and shot inside the lobby of a recording studio in Manhattan’s Times Square. Tupac’s team of criminal attorneys had been in New York with Tupac awaiting a verdict on sexual-assault charges against the rapper. Tupac’s attorneys afterward said the shooting “looks like a setup and smells like a setup.” Later, Tupac publicly blamed Biggie Smalls, who was upstairs in a recording session at the time, in helping to set up the attack.

Earlier in the evening, Tupac had been invited by Ron G., a deejay in New York, to record with him. Tupac had agreed to do the recording for free, as a favor to the young rapper, whom he wanted to help out. (He usually charged other rappers a fee to record on their albums.)

Based on statements made to police by witnesses to the shooting, it went down like this. After finishing the taping session, Tupac was paged by a rapper named Booker, who asked him to tape a song with Little Shawn, an East Coast rapper. Tupac told him he’d do it that day, for $7,000. Booker agreed and told Tupac it was to take place at Quad Studios, at 723 Seventh Avenue between 48th and 49th streets in Times Square. While heading out to the studio, Tupac got a second call from Booker asking why he was taking so long. Then came a third call telling Tupac they didn’t have the money to pay him. Tupac told Booker he wouldn’t record unless he was paid, and hung up. Finally, Tupac got a fourth call from Booker telling him that Uptown Entertainment would take care of the fee, which would be waiting for him when he finished recording. Tupac headed for the studio. By that time, it was just after midnight.

At 12:16 a.m., according to Detective George Nagy with the NYPD’s Midtown North 18th Precinct, Tupac, along with his manager Freddie Moore, his common-law brother-in-law Zayd Turner, fellow rapper Randy “Stretch” Walker, and his half-sister Sekyiwa arrived at Quad Studios. They left their car in a parking garage at 148 West 48th Street. Then they walked the short distance, around the comer, to the studio on Seventh Avenue.

Nine minutes later, Tupac and his group arrived in front of the studio, a police report said. Standing on a small terrace overlooking 48th Street, for a smoke break, were a couple of teenage members of J.U.N.I.O.R. Mafia, a group Biggie Smalls was sponsoring. They hollered down to Tupac to say hello, then went back inside to tell everyone that Tupac had arrived.

Upstairs, it was a party atmosphere. It was a large studio and a lot of people were there that night. Word had spread that Tupac would be recording there. People
were excited in anticipation of the popular rapper’s arrival. Also there to record, but on a different floor from where Tupac was scheduled to record, were Biggie Smalls and Puffy Combs. They were working on Biggie’s “Warning” video. At the time, Quad had recording studios and equipment on five different floors.


Back on the street, on Seventh Avenue, as Tupac and the others approached the entrance to Quad Studios, they could see two black men, near the elevator, wearing Army fatigues, recognized by Tupac as gang garb worn mostly in the Brooklyn area; a third man, also black, was in the lobby, pretending to read a newspaper. Tupac and his group didn’t think twice about the men.

Tupac pressed the intercom button. The four were buzzed in. As they walked toward the elevator, Tupac, according to the police report, was ambushed by the three men, including the man who had been standing just outside the lobby. Two of the three men pulled identical handguns, NYPD Detective George Nagy said.

They went straight for Tupac, ordering him to the floor and demanding he give up all his jewelry and money. When Tupac went for his own gun stashed in his waistband, they shot him. A round hit him in the groin area and passed through his thigh. That bullet cost him a testicle. Then the gunmen began beating him. They ripped his jewelry off him, then shot him again, hitting him in the chest. Tupac was shot five times: twice in the head, twice in the groin area, and once in his left hand. Freddie was shot once in his abdomen. None of the wounds were life-threatening. The men also snatched jewelry from Freddie Moore as they continued holding guns on the others, Nagy said.

Quad Studio Shooting

All told, Tupac had $35,000 worth of gold taken from him. Stolen were a diamond-and-gold ring, a gold bracelet, and several heavy gold chains. Freddie had $5,000 worth of jewelry stolen, which consisted of a gold bracelet and several gold chains.

Little Caeser had yelled down to Tupac’s crew from the top of the recording studio so Tupac knew Biggie was there and felt safe thinking that these men were his security. However the man gets up from the desk as two other men (also black) walk through the door. The three men follow Tupac’s entourage until they get to the elevators. At this point the group pull out their guns and yell at Tupac and his peers, “Give up the jewelry, and get on the floor!”, with this Tupac’s entourage quickly gets on the floor but Tupac, curses at the gunmen and makes a lunge for one of their guns. This resulted in Tupac been shot five times, and his manager Freddie Moore, was also shot once.

The robbers nabbed $5,000 worth of Moore’s jewelry, as well as Tupac’s $30,000 diamond ring and $10,000 in gold chains, but they left Tupac’s diamond-encrusted gold Rolex, resulting in them taking around $40,000 worth of jewelry. Freddie Moore gave chase to the robbers, collapsing in front of a strip club next door, due to his shot wound. During this time Tupac was dragged into the elevator and taken upstairs to the eighth-floor studio to administer first aid, this floor is where there was several well known individuals including Bad Boy Records’ Biggie Smalls and Sean “Puffy” Combs. Tupac would later describe the scene of when he came out of the elevator as very strange. He said that nobody even got up to help him but only stared at him as if they were surprised he was alive. Tupac said that the only person showing any emotion was ‘Little Shawn’ who was crying. Because of this, Tupac believed Biggie and Puffy new about the arranged shooting and either didnt let him know or set it up themselves.

Tupac reportedly had someone roll him a joint as he made a call to either his girlfriend or his mother, and then he called 911. When the cops showed up, Tupac again saw some familiar faces. Two of the first four police officers on the scene were William Kelly and Joseph Kelly (no relation), and “seconds later, Officer Craig McKernan arrived. McKernan had supervised the two Kellys in Tupac’s arrest at the Parker Meridien and had just testified at the rape trial. “Hi, Officer McKernan,” ‘pac sputtered, lying naked in a pool of his own blood. “Hey Tupac, you hang in there,” McKernan responded, as an EMS team secured a brace around Tupac’s neck and strapped him to a board. The stretcher didn’t fit into the elevator, so he had to be propped upright. McKernan helped carry him out past a waiting photographer. “I can’t believe you’re taking my picture on a stretcher,” Tupac groaned, flipping the middle finger at them

Tupac was rushed to Bellevue Hospital. “He was hit by a low-caliber missile,” says Dr. Leon Pachter, chief of Bellevue’s trauma department. “Had it been a high-caliber missile, he’d have been dead.” Tupac continued to bleed heavily all day, so at 1:30 pm, Pachter and a 12-doctor team operated on the damaged blood vessel high in his right leg. At 4 pm, he was out of surgery. At 6:45 pm, against the numerous complaints of his doctors, he checked himself out of the hospital. Dr. Pachter said: “I haven’t seen anybody in my 25-year professional career leave the hospital like this,”. Tupac’s mother Afeni, who had flown up from Atlanta, wheeled the heavily bandaged Tupac out the back door, fighting through a crowd of reporters.The next day, Tupac made a surprise appearance in the Manhattan courtroom where his fate was being decided. He was wheeled in by Nation of Islam bodyguards, his charmed Rolex that the robbers didnt take on his right wrist, his left wrist wrapped in gauze, and his bandaged head and leg covered by a wool-knit Yankees hat and a black Nike warm-up suit