Leonard Jefferson might not have the slightest idea that the photo he took with Tupac Shakur on the fateful night of 1996 would be the rap legend’s last.
Unknown to him, minutes after taking the photo with Shakur and Suge Knight at a traffic signal in Las Vegas, which he took, would capture the final moments of the rap icon’s life.
Now, he is taking the stand in the high-profile murder trial of the rap star.
“We made eye contact a couple of times. I didn’t think anything of it,” Jefferson told the court.
“He didn’t make any gestures at me. I didn’t make any to him,” he recalled.
In those final moments, he remembered, noting a BMW and behind the shiny wheels was Shakur at a red light.
“What caught my attention was the shiny wheels that were on the BMW,” he added.
“Then I looked past the wheels, and I looked up, and I saw Tupac and Suge sitting in the car. I had met Tupac a few months earlier in L.A. at K&M Studios,” the witness continued.
Jefferson and Shakur had previously met in Los Angeles at K&M Studios.
So, there was an acquaintance.
Then, the witness made a request that unwittlingly became a key part of hip-hop history: a photograph with the rapper.
“I said, ‘All right, cool.’ Then I asked him, ‘Hey, man, let me get a picture real quick.’ And I had my camera in the console of my truck.”
Jefferson recounted, “I just grabbed my camera, and I took the picture.”
Instantly, after the photo, the lights turned green, and Jefferson’s vehicle was right behind three of the rapper’s car.
Then, not a minute later, shots were heard on Flamingo Road.
“I heard pop, pop, pop, pop. And I kind of ducked because I knew there were gunshots,” Jefferson testified.
Initially, he said it was unclear to him what was happening.
“Then I looked up, and the cars in front of me were part of Suge and Tupac’s entourage.”
He told the jurors, “They got out of their cars and ran toward the BMW.”
“And you hear Suge saying, ‘Pac got shot. Pac got shot. Pac got shot. We need help. Pac got shot.’”
Amid the chaos, Jefferson became an accident eyewitness to both, and before the shooting, which killed Shakur on the spot and Knight six days later, the picture became history that, in his words, still haunted him.
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