Gang member killed Tupac Shakur - LA Times

Tupac Shakur was killed by a gang member with a pistol provided the Notorious BIG, a newspaper investigation claims.

No arrests have been made over the unsolved murder near the Las Vegas Strip on September 7, 1996.

The Los Angeles Times says it interviewed members of the Southside Crips who had never before spoken out about the killing.

It reports the fatal shots were fired by a Crip named Orlando Anderson, whom Shakur and his bodyguards had beaten in a Las Vegas hotel hours before the shooting.

The newspaper said BIG had agreed to pay the gang $1m (€1m) to kill Shakur, his rival in a feud between East Coast and West Coast rappers.

The 24-year-old BIG, whose real name was Christopher Wallace, was shot dead six months later in Los Angeles, a killing that also remains unsolved.

Anderson, 21, of Compton, was killed in 1998 in an unrelated gang shooting.

Anderson and Wallace had both denied involvement in Shakur's murder.

Las Vegas police interviewed Anderson once but said they could not build a case against him because witnesses in Shakur's entourage weren't cooperating.

A police spokesman did not immediately return a call for comment.