New York Daily News

TuPAC HEAT

Killer gun found in ’98, vanished: Report

- BY NANCY DILLON ndillon@nydailynew­s.com

A NEW BOMBSHELL document is heating up the cold-case investigat­ion of Tupac Shakur’s murder.

According to a report, the gun used to kill the rapper in a 1996 drive-by shooting in Las Vegas secretly surfaced 19 years ago in a Los Angeles County back yard.

An unidentifi­ed man in Compton, Calif., found the .40-caliber Glock on his property in 1998 and alerted police, TMZ.com reported Friday, citing a police document unearthed by producers of the A&E docuseries “Who Killed Tupac?” Mysterious­ly, investigat­ors involved in the case have no idea where the weapon is now, TMZ said.

Compton Police Department records reportedly show the firearm was booked May 30, 1998, though its alleged connection to Shakur was not yet establishe­d.

Two years later, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department took over law enforcemen­t in Compton and received 3,800 confiscate­d firearms previously held by Compton cops, including the Glock, TMZ said.

In 2006, a sheriff’s deputy working on the unsolved 1997 murder of rapper Notorious B.I.G. in Los Angeles discovered that the Compton address where the gun was found had belonged to the girlfriend of a prominent Crips gang member.

The night of his death, Shakur got into a physical fight with an alleged Crip inside a Vegas hotel.

Ballistics testing revealed a match between the Glock and the firearm used to kill Tupac, TMZ said. But the weapon wasn’t sent to investigat­ors in Vegas because a federal prosecutor assigned to the case cited concerns the discovery might cause problems with potential conspirato­rs, according to the police document found by the A&E producers. The weapon was not turned over, and it’s not clear where it is today, the website said.

Tupac’s brother Mopreme Shakur said in a clip of the final episode of “Who Killed Tupac?” that he was never told investigat­ors found the gun.

In a confusing twist, an LAPD source told the Daily News late Friday that it wasn’t clear why the teaser clip for next week's episode includes an on-camera statement saying the document came from the department.

“There was no need for us to even get involved. It didn’t happen in our jurisdicti­on,” the LAPD source said. “It doesn’t make sense.”

The final episode of “Who Killed Tupac?” airs Tuesday night.

 ??  ??

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United States