Wednesday, March 12, 1997

Los Angeles detectives Tuesday were reviewing videotapes from security cameras near the site of Sunday's drive-by shooting of rapper Notorious B.I.G. to determine whether they captured the shooting or other clues that might help in solving the slaying, police said. Authorities declined to say whether the video cameras taped anything incriminating. At least one video showed the area outside the Petersen Automotive Museum, where the 24-year-old rapper was killed, police said. Another video was taken from a nearby bank. The musician, whose real name was Christopher Wallace, was fatally shot shortly after midnight Sunday by a gunman who drove alongside of the vehicle Wallace was sitting in and repeatedly fired bullets through the passenger side window. The gunman, who was described only as a black male in his early 20s, was last seen driving a dark-colored sedan east on Wilshire Boulevard after the shooting.

Police are considering a number of possible motives for the slaying, including that it was part of a deadly feud between different factions in rap music. Wallace, who also went by the name Biggie Smalls, was the second rap celebrity to be killed in a drive-by shooting in six months. The other was Tupac Shakur, a known rival of Wallace's, who was slain in Las Vegas.