Photographer Reveals How He Captured Tupac Shakur’s Final Moments

It’s been nearly 30 years since Tupac Shakur was gunned down while driving through Las Vegas and almost anyone with an interest in one of the greatest rappers of all time has seen the famous photo of him inside the vehicle sitting next to Suge Knight, taken just moments before his death.

And now, with Duane “Keffe D” Davis currently standing trial for Tupac’s death — the first person to ever be tried for the murder — the photographer who took the infamous photograph, Leonard Jefferson, has been speaking to the media about one of the most notorious images ever taken.

The Shot

Late in the evening of September 7, 1996, Jefferson was stopped at a red light in his Chevrolet Suburban on his way to get a pizza when he noticed shiny wheels on a black BMW next to him. In the car were Tupac and Suge on their way to a nightclub after attending the Mike Tyson fight.

“I said, ‘What up, Pac,'” Jefferson tells KTLA 5. “And then he kind of looked at me, and then he recognized me, and he said, ‘Oh, what up, man.’ And then I said, ‘Hey, where you guys going?’ And he said, ‘We’re going to the club, you should follow us.’ And I said, ‘Alright, cool.'”

Jefferson knew Tupac from Los Angeles, having worked for Death Row Records, Tupac’s label that Suge was CEO of, so he asked if he could take a picture of him with his Nikon Nuvis 125i point-and-shoot film camera, which he kept in the center console.

After snapping the photo, Jefferson heard gunshots barely a minute later. Tupac was shot four times, succumbing to his injuries six days later. The bullets grazed Suge Knight.

Jefferson returned to the scene, the exact area where he’d just taken the photo, where he found Suge pleading for help. Amid the chaos, a police officer pointed his gun at Jefferson, briefly detaining him at the scene.

Jefferson’s eyewitness account has now been called upon for the “Keffe D” Davis trial that’s currently being held in the Clark County District Court in Las Vegas.

Jefferson is also involved with writer and director Cole Swanson to make a short film called “The Shot” that will tell the story of the notorious photo. A GoFundMe page has been set up.