Reggie Wright Jr. told a Las Vegas jury that only one Wright Way Security guard was with Tupac on the night he was shot, narrowing the picture of the protection around the rapper on Sept. 7, 1996. Wright, a former Compton Police officer, said Frank Alexander was the only person from his company actually accompanying Tupac that night.
The testimony came in the Tupac Murder Trial in Las Vegas, where the security plan around Tupac has become part of the central dispute. Wright said his company, Wight Way Protective Services, did business with Death Row Records and that the label made up roughly 95 percent of his security work. He also said he was personally on Death Row Records' payroll, and that he trusted some of the Death Row and Mob Piru associates around Tupac as a form of security.
Wright's account matters because it puts a hard number on what had been an unsettled question: how much protection Tupac really had on a major fight night. He said Kevin Hackie was also supposed to attend but did not show up, and later learned Hackie had been tied up dealing with an arrest and hospital situation. Wright added that if he had known something like the shooting was going to happen, he would have had an “army” around Tupac.
That protection never materialized. Tupac was supposed to perform at Club 662 after the Mike Tyson fight and had arrived in Las Vegas in a car with Marion “Suge” Knight that afternoon, but Knight was running late and Tupac took a taxi to the fight. Wright said he did not go to the fight itself, stopped by the MGM parking lot, then returned to Club 662 and stayed there while Tupac, Knight and others were elsewhere. He said he did not know where Tupac and Knight were or exactly when they were heading toward Club 662.
The gap in the security picture is what gives the testimony its weight. Wright said Frank Alexander did not call him after the MGM fight involving Orlando Anderson, and later he was told by two men he knew, both associated with Mob Piru, that Tupac and Knight had been shot. He said he initially thought they were joking with him, then saw police units leave the club area before heading with two others to the shooting location and later to the hospital where Knight and Shakur were taken.
For the trial, the takeaway is blunt: Tupac was not surrounded by a large security detail when he was shot, and the lone company guard was all that was left in the key moment. The unanswered question is why that was enough on a night built around one of the biggest events in Las Vegas.
