It’s been 21 years to the day since Tupac Shakur was gunned down on the Las Vegas strip. Sadly, we’re still no closer to identifying his killer. After hearing the story of the first police officer to respond to the shooting, Tupac likely could have made the search a little easier… had he not used his last words the way that he did.

Then-seargent Chris Carroll was working the bike patrol in the area of the MGM Grand Casino when he got the report that shots had been fired. Carroll said he crossed paths with the convoy that contained the shooters and saw them zip away. He then came upon Suge’s car as it wrecked and ordered the men who were piling out of the car to lay on the ground. He was still unsure if this was the car that had done the shooting until he spotted the bullet holes in the door and saw Shakur in the passenger seat.

Setting the Scene Carroll said that he kept having to turn between Shakur and Suge Knight, as the latter was running around confused outside the car. “I grab the car door and I’m trying to open it, but I can’t get it open,” he says. “[Knight] keeps coming up on my back, so I’m pointing my gun at him. I’m pointing it at the car. I’m yelling, ‘You guys lay down! And you, get the f**k away from me!’” he said in an interview with Vegas Seven. “And every time I’d point the gun at him, he’d back off and even lift his hands up, like ‘All right! All right!’ So I’d go back to the car, and here he comes again. I’m like, ‘F**ker, back off!’ This guy is huge, and the whole time he’s running around at the scene, he’s gushing blood from his head. Gushing blood! I mean the guy had clearly been hit in the head, but he had all his faculties. I couldn’t believe he was running around and doing what he was doing, yelling back and forth.” Carroll said that he finally got the door open and Shakur tumbled out, looking every bit like a horrific remake of his own famed gold bathtub pic. “So I grabbed him with my left arm, and he falls into me, and I’ve still got my gun in the other hand,” Carroll continues. “He’s covered with blood, and I immediately notice that the guy’s got a ton of gold on — a necklace and other jewelry — and all of the gold is covered in blood. That has always left an image in my mind.” “After I pulled him out, Suge starts yelling at him, ‘Pac! Pac!’ And he just keeps yelling it. And the guy I’m holding is trying to yell back at him. He’s sitting up and he’s struggling to get the words out, but he can’t really do it. And as Suge is yelling ‘Pac!,’ I look down and I realize that this is Tupac Shakur.”