PAGE ONE -- Marin City Haunted By Boy's Shooting / Wrongful death trial about to begin

On a sunny Saturday afternoon in 1992, a 6-year-old boy named Qa'id Walker-Teal was pedaling his bicycle at a school playground in Marin City.

Nearby, rap musician Tupac Shakur was posing for photographs and signing autographs with residents of the community where he once lived with his mother.

A fight broke out. Then shots. A bullet struck Qa'id in the forehead, killing him and sending shock waves rippling across the tightly knit community, which had been celebrating its 50th anniversary with an annual festival that August day.

Shakur and his friends were arrested and released, and no one was ever charged with Qa'id's death.

Now, three years later, the annual festivals have stopped. Many residents are left unsettled, saying they will not be satisfied until the killers are convicted.

A Marin County Superior Court jury is expected to be seated today in a wrongful death lawsuit filed by Qa'id's parents against Shakur and his half-brother Maurice Harding.

The suit contends that Shakur pulled a gun during the fight, brandished it, then dropped it when he was punched by someone in the crowd. It alleges Shakur then told Harding to pick up the gun and shoot.

Shakur's attorneys, meanwhile, say the wrong person is being sued. They note that Harding was arrested and charged with the killing but was eventually released for lack of evidence.

Shakur's lawyers are nevertheless negotiating a monetary settlement. Before the 120 potential jurors walked into court yesterday, Shakur's attorney Dennis Cunningham said he thought a settlement had been reached -- for $300,000.

Cunningham said he was told that one of the rapper's record companies had agreed to pay that sum to Qa'id's parents, Ocita Teal and Darrell Walker. Lawyers for Teal and Walker, however, said no such agreement had been made.

Cunningham says his client is "a hair's-breadth away from bankruptcy" and that the settlement from an unidentified record company was offered because Shakur "felt bad about it. . . . It's a bad thing that happened. He wants to acknowledge that."

The defense attorney acknowledged that the bullet that killed Qa'id was traced by authorities to a gun registered to Shakur. "Bad on him for allowing his gun to be in that place," Cunningham said. But, he added, "it was a mob scene and it was nasty . . . Somebody fired the gun over the heads of the advancing crowd that was going to do them harm."

Marin City was traumatized by the killing of the boy and is still seeking answers, said Pastor Fred Small of the Marin City Church of God.

"We're so close, what happens here affects everyone," he said. "I don't think he did it, but if he's willing to contribute something, we'll have to accept that as closure, I guess."

Shakur, meanwhile, was released three weeks ago on $1.4 million bail from Clinton State Prison in Dannemora, N.Y., while he appeals his conviction for sexually abusing a fan in a New York City hotel.

The rap musician, known for lyrics that are often about sex and violence, has been arrested six times since 1993. The incidents ranged from an assault to a gunfight, in which the charges were dropped.

At his sentencing in the sexual abuse case, Shakur said he was leaving his fate to God: "I've been shot five times, and He's brought me this far."

Police and eyewitnesses say that on Aug. 22, 1992, Shakur appeared at the outdoor festival in Marin City, a community of public housing and condominiums just north of Sausalito.

The annual event was one of the oldest and longest-running festivals put on by African Americans in Northern California. It was an attempt to inform people about black heritage, a bright spot in a poor neighborhood made up of many of the descendants of World War II shipyard workers.

As a teenager, Shakur spent time in these housing projects. He later romanticized those times in some of his music.

His attorneys claim in court documents that Shakur lived with his mother and "like many others there, they were poor and hard up. When the defendant began to achieve success as a practitioner of 'rap,' putting out a hit record which led to further opportunities and successes . . . he was able to leave his hard life in Marin City behind him, pursuant to the American Dream."

Shakur's lawyers say he went to the festival from his new home in Oakland that day with a few friends and another rap music group he was promoting. In Marin City, court documents say, he was "mobbed" by young fans and spent the next hour or so hanging out with them.

Then, the attorneys claim, Shakur was confronted by a group "supposedly greatly offended by derogatory statements about Marin City which the defendant reportedly had made in a televised interview weeks or months before. . . . "

According to police reports, Qa'id was on his bicycle, about 100 yards away, when gunfire erupted. A sheriff's sergeant said Shakur was struck in the face, and that Harding allegedly fired three to six shots into the crowd, striking Qa'id.

Shakur was held and later released. Detectives searched his Oakland home and seized ammunition. Shakur denied having a gun or knowing that any of his friends had a gun. Attorneys for Qa'id's parents, however, state in court documents that Qa'id was killed by a bullet fired from a .380 Colt automatic handgun registered to Shakur.

Attorneys for Qa'id's parents have stated in court documents that they may call as many as 29 witnesses to the events surrounding the shooting.

Marin City residents are left searching for answers.

"All of those who had guns, I think, are guilty," said Pastor Small. But, he said, "some things, you have to wait for an eternity to reveal the truth of."