The near-fatal 1994 incident that changed Lil Wayne’s life forever
In 1994, when he was just 12 years of age, the boy who grew up to become known as Lil Wayne suffered a horrific injury. He was shot in the chest, and the terrible experience changed everything for him.
The young Wayne had actually shot himself, which, at the time, he claimed had been the result of an unfortunate accident. He said he’d found the gun lying around in his mother’s house, and, after he picked it up to investigate, he accidentally set it off. The bullet pierced his chest, only just missing his heart.
Many years later, as a grown man and world-famous rapper, Wayne revealed to Billboard that his story wasn’t quite the truth after all. His shooting had been no accident. He’d done it to himself on purpose.
Wayne’s mother had told her young son that he needed to quit rap, which he was already developing a real knack for. This sent him into a despair that saw him pick up the gun that day with the intention of taking his own life. It was only for the fact that he’d missed his heart that he wasn’t successful.
Having survived the shooting, Wayne was nonetheless badly injured. He managed to call 911 and crawl to the door to await help, which eventually came courtesy of an off-duty cop who heard about the incident on his police radio. He rushed over to Wayne’s mother’s house, where the stricken boy was waiting.
The cop kicked down the door and found the bloodied and injured Wayne. He requested an ambulance, but there weren’t any available in the area, so he picked up the boy and took him to a police car driven by one of his colleagues.
At the hospital, the cop was apparently informed that, had he waited for an ambulance to come, Wayne likely would have died. But, having gotten to hospital, he received the treatment he needed and he pulled through.
As an adult, Lil Wayne has publicly credited this cop with saving his life. He even mentioned him during an acceptance speech for an award he won in 2018, thanking him for having “refused to let [him] die.”
It was only after recovering from his wound that Wayne’s rapping took a more serious turn. He and his friend BG started rapping together as a duo, and his skills developed quickly from there. His mother, at this point, recognised the talent of her son, and she finally allowed him to pursue music in a more serious way. There was no looking back from there, and Lil Wayne, over the course of many years, became a phenomenon.