Walter “King Tut” Johnson, The Alleged Gunman In 2Pac’s Quad Studios Shooting, Released From Prison After 27 Years

The alleged gunman in the infamous 1994 shooting of 2Pac at New York’s Quad Studios has been released from prison after serving 27 years behind bars. Walter “King Tut” Johnson, 61, was released from prison earlier this month after the same judge that initially handed him five life sentences came to the belief that Johnson had paid his debt to society. Frederick Block, the presiding judge when Johnson was sentenced in 1997 on robbery charges, says that sentencing Johnson to mandatory life imprisonment under the “three-strikes” law was excessive in hindsight. “Judges gain insights that with the passage of time only can come with experience on the bench and their judicial maturation,” Judge Block wrote in his decision to release Johnson. “I now believe that my sentences, though lawfully rendered, were excessively harsh. Walter “King Tut” Johnson is widely believed to be one of the gunmen who accosted and shot Tupac Shakur in 1994 during a robbery attempt at Quad Studios in Manhattan. Shakur himself would implicate Johnson, as well as fellow Brooklyn gangsters Jacques “Haitian Jack” Agnant and James “Jimmy Henchman” Rosemond of conspiring against him all three men were mentioned in the original liner notes of his 1996 album, The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory, as well as on the scathing diss track, “Against All Odds.” The Quad Studios shooting is also regarded as the catalyst that sparked the East Coast versus West Coast rap saga, as 2Pac believed that fellow late rap icon The Notorious B.I.G. had knowledge of the plot against him, but failed to notify him. This would lead Shakur to wage war against Biggie up until his death in September 1996 after being fatally wounded in a drive-by shooting.

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