Notorious B.I.G wasn’t killed in a drive-by shooting, Diddy’s former bodyguard says

Diddy’s former bodyguard Gene Deal is claiming that the 1997 murder of The Notorious B.I.G. was not a drive-by. In an interview with The Art of Dialogue, Deal said he believes that the killer of The Notorious B.I.G., aka Biggie, was waiting secretly before he made the attack. Deal maintained that the car used in the shooting was around waiting for the rapper all night.

He said he has been concerned over the years about how the rapper’s death is portrayed in documentaries and movies. “It just hurts because they lie too much. A lot of that sh*t be lies the way they put it together, ’cause they listening to these white boys who wasn’t even there. I don’t want to make this racial, but they take these white boys who wasn’t even there and want to use the stories that they want to tell, which is not the truth!

“Wasn’t no drive-by; the car was standing there at the corner. The stories they tell is not truthful. And now people are sitting here believing,” Deal said.

“Every Biggie movie that you see, they say it’s a drive-by. When the witness tells you the car was stood right there at the corner — the car was probably there all night,” Deal, who was part of Diddy’s security detail in the 1990s, added.

24-year-old Biggie was shot and killed on March 9, 1997, while he was leaving a music industry party. The rapper was riding in the front passenger seat of a Chevrolet Suburban when another vehicle pulled up beside his at a red light near the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles and someone shot him. His death came on the back of a conflict between rap music artists from the East and West coasts. 

Deal recounted rushing to the rapper’s aid after the shooting. “I saw this kid lose his life — this kid died while I was pulling him out of the car. I wouldn’t put nobody in my shoes ’cause I don’t feel like they could handle it,” he said. “If I didn’t have God in my life, if I didn’t have people praying for me, I don’t know if I could have handled it. Before we left Andre Harrell’s house, Puff told me I didn’t have to go. Now, I went because I knew that somebody was going to die that night, somebody was going to get shot. I did everything in my power to stop it from being Puff, and it wasn’t Puff.”

“The people that was bodyguarding Big didn’t do everything in their power to stop it from being Big — and that hurts me, even though it wasn’t my principle,” said the former bodyguard.

Biggie, described as “the most prominent East Coast practictioner of gangsta rap,” died weeks before his new album, Life After Death, was expected to drop.