Biggie Smalls was shot four times. One bullet entered his left forearm, another hit him in the back, and yet another one entered his left thigh. None of those could have killed him, the autopsy report detailed (via The Los Angeles Times). The only fatal shot struck him in the right hip and traveled up to his left shoulder, piercing through his colon, liver, heart, and lung on the way there. The medical examiners couldn’t determine in which order the shots were fired.
All the bullets hit Smalls after going through the door of the Suburban. The Notorious B.I.G. was taken to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center to undergo emergency surgery and was pronounced dead at 1:15 a.m., about 45 minutes after the shooting. The examiners determined Smalls was sober, as toxicology analyses found no drugs or alcohol in his blood. The unexpected release of the autopsy report 15 years later was opposed by the rapper’s family.
“What legitimate lead could be stimulated by releasing an autopsy that says Mr. Wallace was shot. When everyone knows that. Why don’t they release some of the clues they have?” the lawyer for Small’s mother told the Los Angeles Times. The Los Angeles P.D. apologized to the Wallaces for making the report public without notifying them beforehand. “Obviously this has been a challenging case for us to solve,” Captain Billy Hayes told NBC News, reiterating the department’s intentions to reignite interest to generate new leads.
