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Sanyika Shakur | |
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 2007 mugshot | |
| Born | Kody Dejohn Scott (1963-11-13)November 13, 1963 Los Angeles,California, U.S. |
| Died | June 6, 2021(2021-06-06) (aged 57) Oceanside, California, U.S. |
| Other names | Monster, Monster Kody, Monster Kody Scott |
| Occupation(s) | Author, speaker |
| Children | 3 |
| Parent(s) | Ernest Scott, Birdie Scott |
| Convictions | Armed robbery, assault, illegal possession of a weapon, parole violation, attempted murder, grand-theft auto |
| Criminal penalty | Imprisonment of six years |
Sanyika Shakur (bornKody Dejohn Scott; November 13, 1963 – June 6, 2021),[1][2] also known by his former street monikerMonster orMonster Kody, was an American author and former gangster. He was a member of theLos Angeles-basedEight Tray Gangster Crips. He got his nickname as a 13-year-old gang member when he beat and stomped a robbery victim until he was disfigured.[3][4] Shakur claimed to have reformed in prison, joined theRepublic of New Afrika movement, and wrote a 1993 memoir calledMonster: The Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member.
Monster describes how Shakur was drawn into gang life, his experiences as a gangster both on the street and in prisons, and eventually his transformation into aBlack nationalist.
Shakur spent 36 months atSan Quentin State Prison and five years atPelican Bay State Prison, most of which was spent insolitary confinement, where he converted toIslam.[5]
In March 2007, Shakur, already sought by police forparole violations and named on the city's most-wanted gang members list, was arrested by theLos Angeles Police Department for allegedly breaking into the home of an acquaintance and beating him in order to steal his car. The charges represented a possiblethird strike that could have sent Shakur back to prisonfor life.[3] In May 2008, Shakur pleadedno contest to carjacking and robbery charges, and was sentenced to six years in state prison.[6] Also in 2008, Shakur made his fiction debut with the publication ofT.H.U.G. L.I.F.E. (Grove Atlantic Books). He was released from Pelican Bay after serving two-thirds of his 6-year sentence in August 2012.
Shakur was born Kody Dejohn Scott inLos Angeles, California, on November 13, 1963, to Ernest Scott and Birdie Canada, both fromHouston, Texas. Kody was the fifth of six children, including four brothers and two sisters (Kevin, Kim, Kerwin, Kershaun, Kody, and Kendis). Shakur believed it was probable that he was the son of formerLos Angeles Ramsrunning backDick Bass and that he was conceived during anadulterousaffair that his mother was having with the football star, a claim for which there is no compelling evidence. Ernest Scott held a bitter resentment toward Birdie's affair and physically abused his wife regularly throughout Shakur's early childhood.[7]
Ernest Scott physically and emotionally abused Kody, routinely beating him and showing deliberate favoritism toward his biological children over Shakur, which included taking the other children out to dinners, movies, and trips to his hometown of Houston and intentionally leaving Shakur behind. In 1970, Ernest and Birdie Scott divorced, and, for the next five years, Ernest Scott would visit the family on weekends but still openly displayed contempt for young Shakur.
In 1972, Birdie Scott moved her family into a house on West 69th Street and Denker Avenue in a very rough and gang-infested neighborhood on the west side ofSouth Central Los Angeles. According to Shakur, his first encounter with street gangs occurred at age ten when he was assaulted by two 13-year-olds who stole his money. Due to Birdie Scott's frequent absences working several jobs to support her large family and the neglect that he received from Ernest Scott, young Shakur would often hang out on the streets of his new neighborhood. It was around this time that he began hanging around his neighborStanley Tookie Williams, the leader of the West Side Crips street gang.
In his memoirBlue Rage, Black Redemption, Tookie Williams recalled the occasions in which he and other adult members of theCrips would smokePCP and lift weights at Williams's house. According to Williams, Shakur was always present at the house and would watch in awe as the gang members would lift weights and tell stories about gang fights and shootings that they had committed. In the book, Williams also expressed his regret regarding his behavior around the impressionable young Shakur, and he held himself personally responsible for exposing Shakur to drugs, as Shakur himself would later become a frequent PCP user.
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In 1975, a member of the West Side Crips nicknamed Sidewinder formed a set called theEight Tray Gangster Crips (also known as 83GC, ETG or ETGC) in Shakur's neighborhood. On the evening of June 15, 1975, the day of his sixth-grade graduation, Shakur was courted into (also known as being "jumped in," when gang members beat up the new recruit to see if he or she is brave enough to fight back and defend himself or herself) the ETGs.
Shakur and another gang member thenhotwired a stolen car after which he and several members of the ETGs, all armed withrevolvers andshotguns, tracked down members of the Brims street gang (a set of theBloods) who had been hanging out in the Crips' neighborhood. The ETGs opened fire on a group of approximately 15 Brims, shooting several of them. Shakur, armed with asawed-off12-gauge shotgun and instructed not to return to the car unless he used all eight rounds of the weapon, shot several Brims gang members that evening.
As a new member of the Crips, Shakur was mentored in the ways of gang-banging by Tray Ball. In 1977, at the age of 13, Shakur and Tray Ball attempted to rob an older black man who was walking through their neighborhood. The man punched Shakur in the face and, after being physically restrained by Tray Ball when he attempted to run, was kicked and stomped by Kody for approximately twenty minutes. Kody's attack left the man in acoma with his face permanently disfigured.
According to Shakur, Crips present at the crime scene overheard police officers saying that whoever assaulted the man was a "monster" and reported this back to him. From that point on, other members of the ETGs referred to Shakur as Monster, and he took the name as a street moniker.
Shakur's first arrest occurred in 1978 at age 14 after he shot and killed an employee of afast-food restaurant who hadassaulted his younger brother Kershaun and later assaulted and pulled a gun on Shakur. Kershaun Scott later joined the Eight Trays and assumed the nickname Li'l Monster.
A week after being released from jail, Shakur was arrested again after being falsely accused of shooting a member of the Inglewood Family Bloods while he and other members of the Crips were on their way to a roller-skating rink inCompton, California. On January 14, 1979, Shakur was arrested for assault andgrand-theft auto and served nine months at Camp Munz inLake Hughes, California.
During Shakur's stay at Camp Munz, several major events occurred on the streets of South Central Los Angeles that involved the Crips. On March 15, 1979, the West Side Crips leaderStanley "Tookie" Williams was arrested for four murders committed during two separate robberies while on an alleged drug binge (to his death, Williams steadfastly denied committing the murders). Williams was sentenced todeath row andexecuted bylethal injection on December 13, 2005.
On August 9, 1979,Raymond Washington, the founder of the Crips, was murdered in adrive-by shooting near his home. Because Raymond Washington always made it a point never to walk up to cars, it was determined that his killers were people he knew personally since he had walked up to the murderers' car and had a conversation with them prior to being shot. Washington's murder was blamed on the Hoover Crips (now known as the Hoover Criminals or Hoover Gang), which started a war between the East Side Crips and the Hoovers.
Shakur, along with his best friend Deautri "Crazy De" Denard, were deeply involved in this gang war and were responsible for shooting and assaulting dozens of members of the Rollin' 60s. On December 31, 1980, 16-year-old Shakur was ambushed and shot six times by three adult members of the Rollin' 60s after being set up by a group of girls who were dating friends from his set. Perhaps what saved his life was the fact that earlier that evening Shakur had been drinking a cheap brand oflow-end fortified wine called Night Train and smokedPCP with other members of the ETGs as the gang celebratedNew Year's Eve, and the level of inebriation that Shakur was under at the time of the shooting prevented him from going intoshock. After being shot, Shakur reported havinghallucinations of seeing the faces of all of the gang members he had shot since joining the Crips, as well as seeing the infant daughter that he had with his girlfriend Tamu. Shakur survived the shooting and was hospitalized for several weeks.
Shakur's younger brother Kershaun, who was by now a member of the Eight Trays and nicknamed Li'l Monster, sought vengeance for his older brother's shooting. On New Years Day 1981, Kershaun and several teenage members of the ETGs committed a string of retaliatory shootings. Kershaun shot two teenagers who were standing in the front yard at a house party that was being thrown in the Rollin' 60's neighborhood and, later that evening, shot another teenager to death in a drive-by as the young man was walking down the street.
Kershaun was later arrested and sentenced to five years in California Youth Authority for murder as a juvenile. While recovering in the hospital, Shakur's assailants from the Rollin' 60s came to the hospital in an attempt to finish him off. Due to the intervention of a nurse who was attending to him, however, Shakur was unharmed. When he was released from the hospital, he continued gang-banging and would spend the remainder of the 1980s in and out of thepenal system for numerous violent offenses.
While in prison during the 1980s, Shakur befriended members of theRepublic of New Afrika movement. Shakur, who dropped out of high school, began to educate himself in prison. He changed his name to Sanyika Shakur and began changing his viewpoint regarding his role in the plight of black people in theUnited States of America. After being released from prison in 1988, Shakur married his longtime girlfriend Tamu.
In January 1991, Shakur was arrested for assault andgrand-theft auto after beating up acrack dealer who was working as a police informant and stealing the dealer'svan. Shakur was incarcerated during the1992 Los Angeles riots that occurred after the acquittal of the four police officers accused of beatingRodney King following a traffic stop. The beating of white truck driverReginald Denny was committed by members of the ETGs in Shakur's neighborhood. This event, as well as participating in Leon Bing's bookDo Or Die, inspired Shakur to write his bookMonster: The Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member.
In the early 1990s, Kody, now calling himself Sanyika Shakur, met rapperTupac Shakur. The two became friends and Shakur mentioned Tupac in the introduction of his book. In 1996, as Shakur was on the run from police for a parole violation, he met up with Tupac on the set of thex-rated version of Tupac's music video "How Do U Want It." This was the last time that Shakur would ever see Tupac.
On September 13, 1996, Tupac Shakur died after being shot in adrive-by shooting inLas Vegas, Nevada, seven days earlier, allegedly by members of the South Side Compton Crips. Shakur would later interview Tupac's alleged murderer,Orlando Anderson, for a December 1997Vibe Magazine article about Tupac's murder, in which Anderson denied being involved in the rapper's murder.
After being captured by police, Shakur was sent toPelican Bay State Prison, whereDeath Row RecordsCEOSuge Knight was also incarcerated for a parole violation that stemmed from his participation in the assault on Anderson. According to theVibe Magazine article, Shakur, upon hearing that Tupac had been shot, initially suspected that Suge Knight had set him up because Tupac was planning to leave Death Row Records to start his own record label.
In the article Shakur stated that he was incredulous after hearing Knight's claims that
At the end of the interview, Knight told Shakur that Orlando Anderson was indeed the person who killed Tupac. Orlando Anderson was killed on May 29, 1998, in an unrelated shooting.
In March 2007, Shakur, already sought by police forparole violations and named on the city's most-wanted gang members list, was arrested by theLos Angeles Police Department for allegedly breaking into the home of an acquaintance and beating him in order to steal his car. The charges represented a possiblethird strike that could have sent Shakur back to prisonfor life.[3]
In May 2008 Shakur pleadedno contest to carjacking and robbery charges, and was sentenced to six years in state prison.[6] Also in 2008, Shakur made his fiction debut with the publication ofT.H.U.G. L.I.F.E. (Grove Atlantic Books). He was released from Pelican Bay after serving two-thirds of his 6-year sentence in August 2012.
In November 2013, Shakur published a book of essays titledStand up, Struggle Forward: New Afrikan Revolutionary Writings on Nation, Class, and Patriarchy (Kersplebedeb BooksISBN 9781894946469).
On July 10, 2017, Shakur was sent back to prison for an assault conviction out ofSan Diego County. He was incarcerated atCentinela State Prison inImperial, California, and later atSolano State Prison inVacaville, California, where he was interviewed by the radio programUncuffed.[8][9] He was later released on parole.
On June 6, 2021, Shakur was found deceased in a tent in a homeless encampment in Oceanside, California. His cause of death according to the San Diego County Coroner’s Office is a stroke.[10][11]
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