According to Las Vegas police, Duane Keith “Keffe D” Davis has been charged with murder with the use of a deadly weapon in relation to the 1996 assassination of rapper Tupac Shakur.
According to officials, Davis, 60, was detained in Las Vegas early on Friday. In July, a search warrant was executed at his wife’s Henderson home as part of the ongoing investigation into the incident.
While leaving a boxing match on the Las Vegas Strip, Shakur was shot and died. The rapper’s sudden death at the age of 25 has sparked conspiracy theories and a long-running investigation.
Davis claims that he was in the front seat of the white Cadillac that pulled up next to Shakur’s vehicle when shots were fired from the back seat, killing the musician. Davis has long identified himself as being at the site of the crime. Six days after being shot four times, the rapper passed away.
At a news conference on Friday, Sheriff Kevin McMahill of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department stated that the family of Tupac Shakur had been waiting for justice for 27 years.
According to McMahill, “the investigation got underway the night of September 7th, 1996.” “It’s not done yet. The men and women of our homicide unit have worked many hours—in fact, decades—to bring us where we are today.
The murder, according to the homicide lieutenant of the police force, Jason Johansson, was a “retaliatory” strike following a fight between two gangs with headquarters in Compton, California. According to Johansson, Shakur and Marion “Shuge” Knight, the former CEO of Death Row Records, belonged to the Mob Piru gang in Compton, while Davis belonged to the Southside Compton Crips.
To watch Mike Tyson fight at the MGM Grand Hotel, Shakur traveled to Las Vegas. Along with Davis and his nephew Orlando Anderson, several Southside Compton Crips members were there.
When Death Row Records members saw Orlando Anderson near an elevator bank inside the MGM, they started to kick and punch him there, according to Johansson, who then displayed hotel security footage of the altercation. Death Row Records members “spotted Orlando Anderson near that elevator bank as both groups were walking away from the fight, and at that time they started to kick and punch him there,” he continued. Shakur and Knight were two of the attackers who went after Anderson.
Little did anyone realize that this particular encounter would eventually result in the reprisal shooting and death of Tupac Shakur, he added?
Both groups departed the hotel, with Shakur and his company going to a nearby nightclub for a post-fight after-party. After hearing of Anderson’s attack, Davis “began to formulate a plan to procure a firearm and exact revenge against Suge Knight and Mr. Shakur,” according to Johansson.
Davis, Terrence Brown, Deandre Smith, and Anderson entered a white Cadillac after he procured a gun.
The occupants in the back seat of the white Cadillac received the gun Mr. Davis had acquired at some point, according to Johansson, while they were driving it.
The group then discovered the black BMW that Shakur and Knight were driving, opened fire on them through the window, and then sped away.
When this gang committed this act, Duane Davis was the one making the decisions. He oversaw the execution of the plot to conduct this crime, according to Johansson. He continued that everyone else connected to the crime had passed away, including Anderson, who had told CNN that he was not involved in the murder before he was killed in a gang-related killing in 1998.
Police, according to Johansson, have long known the general course of what happened that evening, but there wasn’t enough proof to file a case.
According to Johansson, the long-running effort to definitively resolve the matter was “reinvigorated” in 2018. He claimed that one of the most significant aspects of the inquiry was Davis’ own admissions about the crime.
A copy of the memoir Davis wrote documenting street gang life and the murder of Shakur was found when police searched Davis’ wife’s home in July. The only other live witness to Shakur’s shooting, according to Davis’ account, is Knight, the former CEO of Death Row Records, who is currently serving a jail sentence for manslaughter in a separate case.
When Davis was asked which of the four men in the automobile had fired the gun, he said, “Going to keep it for the code of the streets.” “Bro, it just emerged from the backseat.”
The 2018 concentrate on the issue, according to Johansson, was “likely our last time to take a run at this case to successfully solve this case and bring forth a criminal charge.”
Stepbrother of Tupac and rapper Mopreme Shakur termed the news of Davis’ arrest as “bittersweet.”
“We have gone through years of pain. They’ve known about this man, who’s been making noise, for a while,” he said.
So why now? he questioned. We’re not done with this yet. Both the cause and any potential allies are of interest to us.