Twenty-seven years after Tupac Shakur was killed in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas, police have arrested a man in connection with the shooting. The Associated Press reports that Duane Davis, a.k.a. Keefe D, a South Side Compton Crips gang member who’s long claimed to have witnessed the killing, was arrested on September 29. He was charged with one count of murder with a deadly weapon and was denied bail by a judge. Marc DiGiacomo, the chief deputy district attorney of Clark County, said in court that Keefe D “ordered the death†of Tupac as the “on-ground, on-site commander†of the South Side Compton Crips.
The arrest comes after police executed a search warrant on Keefe D’s home in July, reportedly focused on laptops and electronic devices. A grand jury had reportedly been hearing evidence for months. Keefe D had spoken extensively about the shooting in recent years, including in a 2019 memoir, Compton Street Legend. Keefe D is also the uncle of Orlando “Baby Lane†Anderson, the suspected shooter in the incident who was killed in 1998. (He had denied involvement in Tupac’s death.)
Tupac Shakur was shot multiple times on September 7, 1996. He had been at a stoplight in a BMW driven by Suge Knight, the founder of his label, Death Row Records, when a Cadillac pulled up next to them and fired shots. He died a week later in the hospital, 25 years old and at the height of his rap career. Keefe D first admitted to being one of the Cadillac’s passengers in 2018, per AP News, and is now the last living passenger. He spoke to investigators about the shooting in 2010, claiming in his memoir it was in exchange for them dropping an indictment involving a drug ring.
Tupac’s killing has long been the subject of speculation and rumors, including that it was related to the shooting death of the Notorious B.I.G. just six months later. A retired detective in the Los Angeles Police Department who investigated the case, Greg Kading, told the AP the case had been “unprosecutable†before Keefe D’s admissions. Now, he thinks Keefe D “put himself squarely in the middle of the conspiracy.â€
This is a developing story.