September 7, 1996 was a fateful day in hip hop history, with it marking the night Tupac Shakur was shot in Las Vegas, days before he succumbed to his wounds and died. Unbeknownst to most people outside of the Long Beach Polytechnic High School football team, it would also be a fateful day, that concerned the squad's players and 2Pac and his entourage exclusively. It was the day they would mistakenly startle the rap star, prompting him and his guys to pull guns out on them.

A story recently published in Bleacher Report recounts the incident as recalled by several Californians, who were then simply teens stoked to meet one of their idols. It tells of how they all had gone out to get a bite at a Barstow In-N-Out restaurant following a tough loss, and spotted Pac with a bunch of Mob Piru Bloods. When they approached his ride however, they attest to witnessing the state of mind the rap revolutionary had been in at that moment in his life and career. "He was extremely paranoid," says Larry Croom, whose football talents would eventually bring him all the way to the NFL. "He started cursing - he was irate. We were just kids, so it was definitely an overreaction."

"When we first approached Tupac, I wasn't star-struck - I was scared," Darrell Rideaux said, seconding Croom's assertion that "there was this feeling of anxiety and unease."

Thankfully, after screaming for the teens to stop in their tracks, Pac and his folks realized their age and that their intentions were harmless. All it took was a transition from his sometimes menacing stare, to the soft people-loving smile that fans had come to know the 25-year-old for, for tensions to ease down, and camaraderie to prevail. "Because of the way Tupac embraced our group, it got a little lighter," Rideaux told the publication. "A couple of guys peeled off as soon as they saw the guns and heard him talk angrily. But those of us who stayed around connected with him. It was brief, but it was a little connection."

As history would dictate, those Long Beach Polytechnic students got to deliver 2Pac one of the final moments he'd ever get to enjoy with youth from a generation he mentored with passion and conviction. Hours later he'd be struck with four shots that caused him to bleed to death internally, six days later.

Source: nydailynews.com