You're listening to Wake Up Call on Demand from kf I AM six forty kf I hand KOST HD two, Los Angeles, Orange County. It's time for your morning wake up call. Here's Jason Middleton. Good morning everybody. Yes, Wednesday, July nineteen, You made it. You made it to Wednesday. Got a big show today, got a lot of news, a lot of cool interviews too. Before we get into hand along the news at six o'clock, of course, we're gonna talk about the soldier who crossed in North
Korea. We also have Wired Wednesday with Richard Murrow and well we have Jane Wells as well, and some Tupac Shakur developments. And before we get going, though we were coming, we're talking about our first jobs ever. And I realized that my first job ever was delivering morning newspapers. So I was about thirteen, maybe fourteen years old, and I was getting up at three
am to go to work. And here I am, seventy eight years later, still getting up three am to go to work, talking to the our engineer, Steve Kono, and mister Kono his first job was a bad boy as beats mined by a Ton shout out to the Illan Empire. Suci six ers for that one. Right on, Thank you, Cono. All right, let's get into a couple of headlines before we get into the KFI newsroom headlines. The mother of a US soldier who crossed into North Korea says she
shocked and just wants her son to come home. Meta is rolling out a free AI to rival chat GPT for both consumers and businesses. We'll talk with Bitch Dumurro about that. Las Vegas police say they executed a search warrant Monday in the murder of rapper Tupac Shakur. Now, let's start with some of those stories coming out of the KFI twenty four hour newsroom. The LAPD says it will continue to predict protected illegal immigrants from answering questions about their status.
The department's Special Order forty prohibits officers from asking about a person's background, country of origin, or immigration status. Assistant Chief Alebrato told the Police Commission yesterday there are some exceptions line crime, gang crime, weapons violation, narcotics, trafficking, human trafficking, child pornography. Lebrata says the department still does not
cooperate with officials for deportation orders. He says in twenty twenty two, federal agents made seven hundred and eighty three requests to hold an illegal immigrant for deportation, but honored none of them. Steve Gregory can if I knows. Top Republicans on Capitol Hill are standing by former President Trump, who could be facing another federal indictment. Trump announced yesterday he got a letter saying he was the
target of adj investigation into efforts to overturn the twenty twenty election. Trump criticized the investigation while at a campaign event in Iowa. If you say something about an election, they want to put you in jail for the rest of your life. It's a disgrace. He also called it election interference. Police are trying to find a man they say tried to rape three women in LA and
East LA on the same day. At least one of the women, twenty one year old Sergio Garcia's accused of attacking, is a sixty seven year old who was gardening. The Woman's son in law, Gilbert Corio, says Garcia through the woman to the ground Saturday and punched her in the face several times. He tried to proceed to sexually assault her, at which point the neighbor's catto windowville was happening. They came out, they intervened, and at that
point the individual pretty much ran away in his bike. The woman suffered a concussion and broken nose. Her eyes were left swollen shut in East La Blake Trolley k if I News. An ozone advisory for much of the South Coast air Basin and Coachella Valley has been extended because of the heat. It was supposed to expire last night, but it is now in effect through eight pm
Saturday. The AQMD says over the past few days, air quality index levels have reached unhealthy in most inland areas and very unhealthy in some localized areas. Because of the prolonged heat wave, high interest rates and gunshy lenders have led to a spike in the number of home loan application rejections. The rejection rate jumped to just under twenty two percent, so one out of every five from June of twenty twenty two to June of twenty twenty three. The latest Federal
Reserve survey says that's the highest level in five years. Overall credit applications are down to their lowest level since October twenty twenty, and the FED says the number of auto loans being turned down is also up from nine point one to fourteen point two percent. The FED survey showed not only were home loans and car loans being rejected at higher rates, a record number of applicants expected to be turned down. Amy King, KFI News and a couple of short minutes.
The first topic on wake Up Call is going to be the unfolding and rather strange story from North Korea and the soldier who apparently crossed the DMZ by choice. But first from the Southern California Toyota Dealers Traffic Center. Let's go places, and let's check the ninety one in Anaheim westbound at Tusted. You've got to crash off to the shoulder. Watch for slowing as you approach Corona. The fifteen northbound between Hidden Valley Parkway and Second Street or works on blocking
the two right lanes. And as you make your way through Compton this morning. This in ten south on at Laundre, you've got a crash blocking the left lane. Traffic slow there as you approach as well, Kay, fine, the sky helps get you there faster I'm Dave Joseph all R. Right now. A US Army private who had just finished a stint in a South Korean detention facility crossed the border in North Korea quote without authorization end quote,
and is now in custody in that country. Traffic's over. ABC's Matt Seiler is on the line with us to help unpack this developing and somewhat odd story. Good morning, sir, Hey, good morning, Thanks so much for having me. Absolutely Okay. His name is Travis King. He's twenty three. What else do we know this morning? So he served as a scout in the cavalry scout in the Army. He's a junior enlisted soldier. So he had gotten into some kind of trouble out in town. It sounds like
yet an altercation with locals. That's what led him to do that stint, which turned out to be forty five days in a South Korean detention facility. So he did his time. He was released to a US base who was there for about a week under observation, at which point he was escorted to
the airport. From there he was supposed to fly and end up in Fort Bliss, Texas, where he was most likely going to be administratively separated, which means the army was probably going to kick him out of the service basically, but that didn't happen. Of course, his handlers, his escort took him as far as the customs or security checkpoint at the airport sent him through.
He didn't get on that plane. He at some point got out of the airport, ended up on a tour of the DMZ and from there deliberately, as you said, the military is very clear about this, he deliberately, willfully crossed that line into North Korea, where they believe he's still under custody. Matt, I'm confused. The pressure point here seems to be the transfer at the airport, right an opportunity for him to find some kind of
We don't have any information about that. Is it customary to just drop off a soldier who has to go back to Fort Bliss and just say okay, good luck and get on the plane. So in this case, it wasn't as if it's a prisoner transport, in which you know, you would have an escort all the way to the gate, if not on the flight. So he had served his time in South Korea, so in some sense, he was kind of a free man, even though what waited him in Texas
was most likely a discharge of some sort. So it makes sense to a degree, you know, and the escort doesn't have tickets. They take him as far as they can into the airport and then it's on him to get on that flight. And from officials, I've talked two here around the building at the Pentagon, they said, you know, there was no indication that a flight risk or anything like that. And you know, no one would
anticipate a young American serviceman would put it this way. We've heard harrowing tales of people escaping from North Korea, but escaping into North Korea is another thing entirely now that that is quite odd and unexpected. But that's what he did. Apparently found his way onto a tour, jumped across that line. Yeah, okay, let's talk about that. We're speaking with ABC's Matt Siler about the North Korean soldier or the soldier who defected or without authorization, crossed the
DMZ into North Korea. His second choice was to from the tour that he was on at the time. Do we know any details about that situation? Right? So there are some eyewitnesses, you know, unconfirmed reports that we've heard from people on the ground that you know, they witnessed him run across. There might have been some attempt from from guards on the South Korean side to maybe halt him and didn't get to him in time. That's not totally
clear. But he was taken into custody by the North Koreans on the other side of that line. Now what happens next to him, you know, that's hard to say. There's some precedent. We had the instance in twenty sixteen of an American being held in North Korea, that being Auto warm Beer, whom was released about a year later in twenty seventeen in a vegetative state and brought back to the United States, which he soon died after that.
So some rather dark precedent. I you know, you can't imagine what would what would be in someone's head to make this decision, Right, was when was the last affection by a US soldier or I'm using the defection were just as a not as a value judgment. I'm just saying that like the last
time a US soldier liberated themselves into North Korea? Right, If I'm not mistaken, off the top of my head, I believe there's not a case of that since the nineteen sixties, and then whether there were a few a cluster of them in the nineteen sixties, and I believe only one of them made it back to the United States and then was core marshaled upon arrival.
So it's an odd occurrence. Now the US has a couple of options to exercise in terms of getting them back that the US doesn't have open diplomatic relations with North Korea, of course, but Sweden does, and in the past the US has been able to use Sweden as an intermediary to secure some limited consular services for people inside North Korea. So there's some chance of doing that.
But the State Department sort of signaled yesterday that you know, at this point they have no reason to believe that Private King wants to come back, and so the Biden administration might temper their efforts based on that. Right, Matt, One last question, and the reason I was being careful with the word defection because that has a certain connotation to it, and I have to be very careful around that because it depends on how North Korea treats this,
right. I mean, if they treat it like a defection, it could go one way. If they treat it like a diplomatic opportunity, it could go a different way. Right, is that how the State Department might see it, well, defection it might have more to do with the motivation of the person. Assessing the motivation why that person left and how they're treated after
that is a different matter with North Korea. I mean, another big point here though, is that this whole story is overshadowed which would have been the big story of the day, which is that for the first time in over forty years, the US had just sent a nuclear capable submarine support in South Korea, which is meant to be a big sign of hey, we have your back, would take security in the region seriously and also a signal to
deter North Korea from aggression in the region. And then whence in this same period we have this story breaking, right with a US service member, an active duty service member willingly crossing into North Korea, and then North Korea shortly after that sub's arrival also launching to sure arrange ballistic missiles into the Sea of Japan. So it's just been a kind of a frenetic wild twenty four or so hours on the peninsula. A couple of really strong story threads to follow.
Thanks for your time and expertise around this. Matt Tyler and he's sign ABC's Matt Siler. They're joining us talking about the soldier who split and left a tour across the DMZ at Panmun John and went into North Korea. A lot to follow there. Let's get back to some of those stories coming out
of the KFI twenty far our newsroom before we go to break. A billboard in San Pedro has been taken down after years of complaints to the city Councilman Tim mccoscar says the sign was blocking a pedestrian bridge and was used as a hideout for people up to no good drug sales, malicious damage to the public property, which is the bridge, and the bridge is constantly behind the sign.
Only behind the sign was constantly filled with graffiti and drug paraphernalia. Mccoscars as, the company that owned the billboard, was supposed to take it down when their lease was up last year, but they waited months before removing it. This week, two people were hurt while working to take down the billboard. The crane being used collapsed yesterday, causing the workers to fall about twenty
feet. The extent of their injuries was not immediately known. San Clementi has hired private security in response to complaints about the homeless and rowdy teens who attacked three marines, loitering, sleeping on the beach, illegal activities, drugs, and such Sant Clementi councilman Rick Lefler says the city had wanted to wait to hire more deputies, but when the marines were attacked over Memorial Day weekend,
certainly a major embarrassing issue. Four unarmed guards started this week at seventy thousand dollars per month for six months to keep order and help with the homeless. Refer to these people to resources, whether it be drug rehabilitation, possible housing sources, even colin a relative and saying hey, do you know your uncle is down here and could use some help. In Orange County, Corbin Carson kf I News, Sixteen people in Michigan have been charged with felony election crimes.
Attorney General Dana Nessel says the people charged knowingly tried to circumvent the will of Michigan voters after the twenty twenty presidential election by signing documents attesting to being duly elected and qualified presidential electors. After signing these fraudulent electoral documents, some of the false electors attempted to enter the state capital and deliver their fabricated electoral votes to the Senate floor, but were turned away. She says the charges
are not political. A first jan first generation iPhone has sold at auction for more than one hundred and ninety thousand dollars. It's sold for about five hundred bucks when it was first available back in two thousand and seven. It had every bit of four gigabytes in it and was discontinued two months after it was released. An eight gigabyte model sold for over sixty three thousand dollars in February. Right now, we have Rich Dumurou. He's KTLA's tech reporter. Of
course, he's also host of Rich on Tech right here on KFI. Saturday's eliminate them to two pm. Good warning, Rich, always a pleasure. Hey, good morning to Jason. Let's jump into the meta AI thing because that's kind of a that might be a transitional thing that's larger than we might have first thought. Yeah, this is pretty big. So Meta has announced that they have a new AI system called Lama two. They used to have one called Lama while they've been called Lama one, it was just Lama AI.
But Lama two is of course much more advanced. But here's the thing. It is open source, which means anyone can jump in and look under
the hood and see what makes this AI tick. And they're giving it away for free, which means that startups, companies, pretty much anyone can tap into this and use it to build whatever they want, which is huge compared to closed systems from Google and from open Ai, which you can play with and use, but if you want to use it in your commercial apps, you're gonna have to pay up, Okay, So this kind of solidifies Microsoft right is a benchmark for AI given its relationship with chat GPT. Yeah,
which is kind of interesting because Microsoft is really really embracing this. They have a partnership where Microsoft developers can easily access this new Lama two. But it's interesting because Microsoft is also a big investor in open Ai, which are the makers of chat GBT, so now they're kind of playing with both maybe hedge in their bets and it's an interesting move by Microsoft, because why would you choose open AI system versus this new meta system when you get one for free
and not the other. Now, I'm sure they each have their own pros and cons, but the reality is if you're a startup and you're sitting there saying, let me, let me start with this one and then maybe we'll see what we can do. There is one distinction, Jason, which is kind of interesting that to use this for free, your company cannot have more than seven hundred million active users, and so that means that it will keep things like Twitter out for free. They they would have to pay right app
too, right because Snap is over seven hundred million monthly. You know, I don't know if they have that many yet. I you know, I should know this because I just did a story with them and they were talking about their monthlies. But it may be that. I think. I think the larger question I should have asked is there's no such thing as a free lunch. These things are free right now, but they're not going to stay
free, right I mean, there's no way. Well, uh, you know, we've seen a history on the web of open source and free products. What we typically see is a level of free and then all of a sudden they'll start building little things on top that's like a value add So if you've ever gone to like a website to build like a personal website, yeah, you can get a free version. But if you want this, this, and that, well guess what you're gonna pay. It's called the freemium
model. And I think that's what Facebook is doing here. Okay, great, and one more quick question about this and we'll move to Gmail, Apple, Spotify, Rise, and a couple of others don't let their employees use chat GPT. Will that situation be different? Do you think with this since it's open source? You know what? Maybe just because they can control better control. I think what these companies want to do is they want to come up with their own systems that they can control what goes in, what goes
out. And I think that's the big name of the game there. And it's also early. You know that if you put something into one of these systems, it sort of goes into the hopper I call it, you know, like your information, whatever you put in is now part of that learning
curve for that you know that AI. So that's why companies like Microsoft and all these other companies don't want their sorry, Microsoft, Apple, don't want their employees using it because they may put some proprietary information in there that someone else can then access. Right on. Okay, thank you for that. M Yesterday afternoon, I was logging into my Gmail and I got, hey, do you want to do safer browsing? And I didn't. I didn't click on it because I knew I was going to talk to you today.
What's the deal with the security that they're trying to enhance. Yeah, a lot of people have questions about this because it did pop up on Gmail. This has been a feature that is has been available on Chrome for a long time, and so now they're rolling it out to Gmail. And what it does is it allows Google to check your links in real time and the contents of your email against the database of other emails and other links to make sure
that there's no malware, there's no phishing. So it's additional protection. Now, if you don't say yes, they check your information against a database that's about thirty minutes old. So if you say yes, they're going to check against the database that's in real time. And Jason, the real time aspect is let's say a spammer sends out, you know, ten thousand email spam messages in you know, all of a sudden, right, and a lot of people start reporting on that, Hey, report spam, report spam.
Well after like the one hundredth person reports it in a minute, let's say Google's little systems say, oh, we got new spam. Here's what it looks like, here's where it comes from. And so if you're on this enhanced safe browsing, immediately when they check that email in your box, they'll say, oh, we already know that this is bad. But if you're on the regular, if you don't turn this on, it'll be updated, but in a half an hour, so it's more real time with Google.
And of course the downside to all of this is that you do have to share a bit more information with Google because they're using your data to crowdsource these safety warnings, right. That seems to be the sop with Google, doesn't it. So yeah, pretty much, that's okay. But I mean it's it's a free service, so it's it's a known transaction. You're getting a lot of value for that as long as you're willing to trade some of your personal data. So yeah, and I think that I think in general it's
it's Google. I've met with the team that actually came up with this, and I believe me, they are very, very good and this has saved a lot of people from a lot of bad stuff. So it's probably worth it to turn it on. If you're a little bit advanced, a little bit tech savvy, then maybe you could just leave it off. But I think for the average person, it's probably a good thing to have that big red warning when you open an email that says, warning, do not click
the links in this has been identified as spam. Yeah, very cool. Okay, at the break, I'm going to turn this on, but I wanted to talk with you first. AI head shots. Now, these are not selfies necessarily, and I've seen your website. I mean, you know it's it's your head shots are elegant, all right? Now? Can AI help mine look elegant? Oh, Jason, I'm not kidding. You gotta
do this today. I'm this is this is incredible. So this is an app called Remedy, and it's a it's an app that you upload about twelve selfies. And we've seen all the AI generated stuff, right, like, we know about that yeah, but this one helps you create a head shot and so you upload twelve selfies. I did it yesterday. It is quite incredible. It takes about fifteen to twenty minutes for them to generate your head shot, but it is really really good. Um. I did it with
myself and it I think the pictures looked pretty good. And then I had my photographer here at KTLA. I said, hey, Luise, you want to you want a new head shot? He said sure, and I'm not kidding. Twenty minutes later, the guy's never looked better. I mean, it's incredible like these, and you can choose the pose you want too, so you can have you know, in a suit. I mean, it's really really good that the trick is Jason. You have to sign up for
a three day trial. After that, if you don't cancel, it's ten dollars a week. So the name of the game of this app is really to get people to forget to cancel. So don't forget to cancel exactly, right, Yeah, would you set a calendar reminder to opt out after about forty eight seventy two hours? Right, So, well, I'll take it even a step further. My trick is you just cancel immediately before you even
use the app. So sign up for the free trial, go into your settings and cancel, and you still have access for the next three days, So so that way you don't forget. You were super cool with the first results you got back after fifteen minutes or twenty minutes of processing. Oh my gosh, I'm not kidding. And the pictures that I submitted were just all random selfies that I had taken before, and I mean, it's really quite
impressive. And the thing is, Jason, if it's this good right now, this is a free app, and we are just at the beginning of all this AI stuff. Imagine in a year where this will be and it's just getting to the point where you really almost can't believe what you see online because of this stuff. Amazing stuff. Rich always a pleasure and when I anchor on Saturdays, the time just flies because I'm on the same time you are. You're on from Saturdays from eleven am to two pm. He's KTLA
tech reporter Rich de Murrow. He's host of Rich on Tech. Like I said, Saturdays on K five. You can follow Rich on Instagram at rich on Tech, and his website is Rich on tech dot TV. See I got that, Bill didn't get that yesterday. It's dot TV. Yes, thanks Rich always a pleasure. Thanks, thanks, Jason, appreciate it. See you Saturday. All right, man, we haven't heard that in a minute. That intro music was for a reason. Jane Wells is on the
line this good morning. You're not going to believe. First of all, this Taco Tuesday thing is hilarious that that was that had to right America apparently right now. But I had a dream right before I woke up that I was filling in on KFI and they were coming from back from break and it all went to hell, and I was supposed to talk about Spiro Agnew and I didn't remember anything else, and I was trying to remember nattering nabobs and my computer went dead. And I swear, Jason, as I was talking
to you about that, my computer went dead. So I foretold, Wow, I know whoa No really, I mean, because we don't want Spiro Agnew back either, Okay, Jane, So let's just stop conjuring in your dreams, please. Okay, let's move over, let's move over, let's get let's get to it. I'm so sorry that's Okay, cool, I just want talk about Netflix earnings because this is something I do follow as a thread. I want to get your take on it. Netflix reports earnings today.
It's expected to be a banger, right it is. Even though we've got these tremendous strikes going on in Hollywood and everyone is afraid of running out of content. Netflix is supposed to have an incredible quarter because it ended its password sharing and it's starting to gain some traction with its cheaper subscription if you're willing to have ads. And Netflix is not as dependent on US studios. It has a global operation think squid Game, so it can get more content
from places that are not under this SAG and WGA contract if necessary. So Netflix is expected to have it have added maybe almost two million subscribers on the quarter. A year ago they lost a million, and Jason, this is the story about Netflix. Every few years, people write it off as well, this is it for Netflix. You know you got Disney Plus, or they're starting to lose subscribers or what. This happens. This has been happening every twenty years. Every so often it's like, oh that's the end,
and no. Netflix always comes back. The stock is up about fifty percent year to date, and we'll see what the actual earnings are after this. But people a year ago were saying analysts were starting to say, well, that's it, the good the glory days for Netflix are over, and now they're saying no. And a big reason is because they ended passwords sharing. Yeah, you're right, and they've insulated themselves because of production in India and
in South Asia. So I mean in Korea specifically, yes, but well, a lot of traction for that. That's interesting. I did see that Read Hastings, CEO at Netflix. He was listed on the SAG list at two hundred million dollars annual salary, which was a pressure point for their negotiations. I'm not following the Tour de France very much, but I know it's on our talk point. Oh no, did you have something on Netflix?
I'll stay here. I was just gonna say all these CEOs, you know, Bob Iger was on CNBC talking about how the actors don't understand the reality we live in. This is after he just got in a two year extension for I don't know what is it, fifty four million dollars from Disney and fran Drescher said you know, maybe they out of lock them in a room. So it's difficult for these CEOs to complain that actors don't understand the reality when you know they're all up in Sun Valley. Yeah, fair enough,
that's very true. Now, I did want to pivot over to Tour de France if I could with you before we have to let you go because I'm not following it. But apparently it's been awesome. So I've been doing a little bit of research and it looks fantastic. There's also some tech involved as Well's what should we be following with Tour de France this year? Well, it is one of the most exciting Tour de Frances in a long time.
And what I did I did a story for my substack Jane Wels dot substack dot com or who are these young American writers coming out of the shadow of Lance Armstrong. You know, Lance lost about seventy five million dollars in sponsorships when he finally admitted to all the cheating he'd done for the years and years and years. So I wanted to know our American cyclist back, what's the situation with cheating? How much money can you make? I talked to one
of the youngest writers in this year's tour, Kevin Verm Marky. He's from California, started out mountain bike riding, like so many of these young American riders do. They get over to a road bike and they love it. He says basically that the technology has improved so much with nutrition and training. Guys are training at altitude above six thousand feet and the bikes that the cheating
from Lance's day is really no longer necessary. And he says that he has to provide a location twice a day and a window of time when he'll be there, but the doping people can show up anytime to test him, and they have done so about ten times over the last year without not even related to her race, So it was interesting to me. He says. Maybe some guys are still in the gray area, but he has never seen it.
He thinks is the most anti doping sport ever. Now. He respects what Lance did because he says it was a dirty era and he still won seven tours in a row. But it is amazing watching these guys and they don't make that much money if you're new. I mean, some of the top guys can make six figures. But if you're just a brand new rookie, the minimum contract is fifty thousand dollars a year. Now, this is
for a world tour club. That's not a lot. So they're all living over in Spain, eating ramen or whatever they have to eat to train all the time. They cannot usually get outside sponsors because the team already has sponsors. So the rank and file guys of these elite, elite elite groups are not making a ton of money. Well, and it's also one hundred and twenty degrees in Spain right now with everyone who's train before the Tour de France.
Yeah, and I'm looking at the headlines and honestly, I can't even his name is Jonas, and I'm not going to be able without a pronouncer to do his last name. But he's He's Vanagar. Thank you. Fire on that one. Let's move to some consumer economy real quick, because this is also something that's in my swing zone. But I want to hear your take. Twenty two percent of loans in the US rejected in the last month.
Okay, why it's interesting, And I think part of it is that a lot of banks that would be doing this lending are a little skittish after we've had the bank failures earlier this year, and fewer people are applying for loans, so you have this the highest rejection rate in five years, twenty two percent, with fewer people applying. Most of the people being rejected have credit scores of six eighty year under. But it's really across the board,
and it's across all kinds of loans. I mean, we're talking auto loans, credit card applications. Refis in particular being rejected at thirty one percent, which tells you what the banks think are going to happen with how housing prices. But it's very very interesting. This is according to the Federal Reserve that this is happening as fewer people even are applying and banks this is where banks
make their money is in lending. So I'm not quite sure all the reasons why, but that's a big number, one out of five, more than one out of five loans being turned down. Yeah, I agree, the credit crunch is here. The free money era is definitely over. In the Fed is aggressively addressing this. For sure. You met your substack a second ago. Where else can people find you on the webs? Well, I'm on threads now with all you know, thirty three people following me there,
so it's all at Jane Wells everywhere across the social media landscape. And can I just tell you there's too many social media channels now and I'm I'm honestly, Jason, I'm getting bored and I'm interacting with them less and less all the time. Wow, welcome, I you know what, I am one of the followers, I will say, but I too, am not very engaged, and I hope that the bosses aren't listening terribly because they like us to be on the socials as much as we can. Jane. Always a
pleasure. Great to have you back and we'll talk again soon. Thank you. Take care. Las Vegas police say they executed a search warrant Monday in the murder of rapper or the killing and shooting of rapper Tupac Shakur. Shakur was shot and killed twenty six years ago. And on the line with this is ABC's Alex Stone to discuss this. Welcome back, Alex. Hey, Jason, how are you doing. I'm good, I'm good. Thanks you. Now. I guess there's not a lot of details coming out of the
LVPD on this. Can you give us caught up? Yeah, so overnight we did learn a lot more from a source in the investigation. So, first of all, I think there was a lot of shock even among law enforcement nationwide that this thirty year old, nearly thirty year old murder cold case, all of a sudden, you know, all the folklore around it, all the conspiracy theories about Tupac and is he alive, was he really murdered, who was involved, and it wasn't connected to the Biggie Smalls murder in
LA. A lot of people believe it was, you know, all of that. Then all of a sudden, boom, it comes back to life. Now we understand that this is connected to a guy who took part in a Netflix documentary, wrote a book Compton Street Legend in twenty nineteen, did a BT interview in a documentary claiming that he is the only living eyewitness to
what truly went down. The other eyewitness would be Shook Night. He's in prison for the murder the hit and run in LA a couple of years ago, and Choke Knight has said from the beginning that his job is not to solve murders, that they don't pay him to do that, and that he's not going to help police out on that. So the belief being that this may be a guy who was in the car with the killer, was in the killers car. We obtained overnight audio of the swat team moving in in
Las Vegas late Monday night sounded like this. They went in with a full swat team, even though this guy is quite a bit older now and not quite the young rapper that he was thirty years ago. But they went in with armored vehicles. The full swat team ordered to everybody in the home to come out. We know that prosecutors and LVMPD they believe that they've got enough
to move forward now. They went in looking we're told for computers articles about Tupac, about his death that will now be presented to a grand jury in Las Vegas. No charging decisions have been made. They're going to decide on that. The thinking there is among police in Las Vegas, we're told from inside the case, is that the shooter died a long time ago. About two years after the murder of Tupac, there was another drive by shooting in
Las Vegas. They think that was the death of the murder this is going to be it appears, and we'll see where it goes. But accessory to a crime something like that, not the actual murder, but that'll be up to a grand jury if they go anywhere with it, and what the charges would be. But just the fact that this is still an open investigation and still moving that was a shock of it. And by the way, Jason,
we talked to LAPD yesterday. They tell us there's no movement in the Biggie Smalls murder, so it's not like this is sparking anything and that they said, no, nothing new there. Well, Alex, you've given us a pretty good three sixty about this. I guess my only follow up question would have to be this being such a high profile case, is LVPD known to be a little more forthcoming with these things. Do you have anything on the schedule today as far as updates or any kind of press conferences. No,
they typically are pretty a tight lipped. They are not going to hold any briefings on this, at least that there are none that are planned. We're likely not going to find that much more. Everything is sealed and this nobody's been arrested, so the grand jury is beginning it's work. This could now go on for quite a while that they are, they're going to present what they found. Once they get their case together, it'll go that grand jury. The grand jury will do its work in whatever amount of time it
will work. Then a charging decision will be made based on what the grand jury says. So this could go now many months, it could be six months, it could be a year from now where we say, you know, oh my gosh, that there are charges filed in the Tupac murder, or maybe it'll go nowhere, maybe we'll never hear another thing about it. If the jury says no, they don't want to do it, so likely it's not going to be anything immediate. LVMPD says that they don't plan on
saying or doing anything at this point. You know, the information we're getting or from folks inside the investigation and publicly they're they're not saying a whole lot. All right, Well, Alex, thank you so much for this very informative and conclusive so far. It's been a minute since you and I shared some mere It's good to hear your boys. Yeah, it's good to talk to you. Thanks Jason, bye, Alex. We lead Local Live from the kf I twenty four our news room. I'm Jason Middleton. This has
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