Duane "Keffe D" Davis, who was charged with one count of murder with a deadly weapon for his alleged role in leading a group of men to kill hip-hop star Tupac Shakur in a 1996 drive-by shooting near the Las Vegas Strip, is shown in a police mugshot released by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department on September 29, 2023.
Credit: Reuters Photo
More than 25 years after the killing of Tupac Shakur became a defining tragedy in hip-hop, a self-described gang member who has repeatedly proclaimed that he participated in the drive-by shooting of the rapper was indicted on a murder charge, Las Vegas prosecutors announced Friday, reviving a blockbuster investigation that had long stalled.
The man, Duane Keith Davis, has said in interviews and a memoir that he was in the passenger seat of the white Cadillac that pulled up near the vehicle holding Shakur on a night in 1996, after a Mike Tyson-Bruce Seldon prizefight in Las Vegas.
Shot four times, the 25-year-old rapper died less than a week later.
A grand jury in Clark County indicted Davis on one count of murder with use of a deadly weapon and with the intent to promote, further or assist a criminal gang, a prosecutor said in court Friday. The prosecutor said Davis was in custody.
Despite plentiful speculation, evidence and reporting surrounding the murder across the span of nearly three decades, no charges had ever been filed in the shooting of Shakur, who had already become one of the most popular artists of the 1990s. But talk of the case was revived in July, when the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department executed a search warrant at a home in Henderson, Nevada, connected to Davis.
Marc DiGiacomo, a chief deputy district attorney in Clark County, said in court Friday that Davis was the “on-ground, on-site commander” who “ordered the death” of Shakur and the attempted murder of Marion Knight, the rap mogul known as Suge, who was driving the car holding the rapper.
Davis, who goes by the name Keffe D, recounted the events leading up to and after the shooting in his 2019 memoir, describing a gang dispute that escalated after Shakur and his associates beat up Davis’ nephew, Orlando Anderson, after the boxing match at the MGM Grand hotel.
DiGiacomo acknowledged in court Friday that the broad outlines of what occurred that night were known to the police as far back as 1996.
“What was lacking was admissible evidence to establish this chain of events that occurred that night,” the prosecutor said, noting that Davis then began to describe his role publicly. “He admitted within that book that he did acquire the firearm with the intent to go hunt down Mr. Shakur and Mr. Knight; he admitted to being the front-right passenger in the white Cadillac.”