Source : the age
A drive-by shooting in 1996 claimed one of the most defining and iconic figures of hip-hop. It also left an enduring mystery in its wake.
Almost 30 years after Tupac Shakur was slain near the Las Vegas Strip, the quest to unmask the person responsible for the rap legend’s killing continues.
Duane “Keffe D” Davis, the former gang leader accused of orchestrating the killing, will defend a non-guilty plea before a jury in a trial that began on Monday, local Las Vegas time.
As jury selection began, Shakur’s family gathered at a Las Vegas courthouse. “Whoever had anything to do with it, whoever set it up, whoever had any hand in it should be locked up in prison,” the rapper’s cousin, Kendrick Lesane, said.
Who was Tupac?
Named after an Indigenous Peruvian leader who directed an uprising against Spanish colonial rule, Shakur was born in 1971 in East Harlem, New York.
His mother, Afeni Shakur, and godmother, Assata Shakur, were members of the Black Panther Party and deeply involved in black liberation movements, which influenced him from a young age until he died.
When he was 13, Shakur moved to Baltimore and studied acting, poetry, jazz and ballet in school. He later moved to California in 1988, where he immersed himself in hip-hop culture and began his rap career.
During his time in California, Shakur released four studio albums and starred in seven films, one of which was opposite Janet Jackson.
But he also became part of rap’s infamous East Coast-West Coast feud between music mogul Marion “Suge” Knight’s Death Row Records in Los Angeles and Sean “Diddy” Combs’ Bad Boy Records in New York, which it is believed led ultimately to his death.
The 1996 shooting
At 11.55pm on September 7, 1996, 25-year-old Shakur was in a black BMW with Knight when a white Cadillac pulled up at a red light. Shakur, who was in the passenger seat, was shot four times.
He died from internal bleeding six days later, in the afternoon of September 13, after being hospitalised in a critical condition and placed into an induced coma. Knight survived.
Only seven months earlier, Shakur released his fourth solo album, All Eyez on Me, which would go on to become one of hip-hop’s best-selling albums of all time. Three decades on, his music and iconography remain immortalised in the history of rap and hip-hop.
Who is ‘Keffe D’?
“Keffe D”, whose name is Duane Davis, is the 63-year-old man on trial and accused of ordering Shakur’s murder.
At the time of the 1996 shooting, Davis was a leader of the South Side Compton Crips in California. The case into Shakur’s murder went cold until recent years, when a 2019 tell-all memoir from Davis revived it, and he was arrested in 2023.
Davis co-wrote the memoir Compton Street Legends, which vividly describes the shooting. The book says Davis obtained a handgun from an associate and tossed it into the back seat of the Cadillac but did not say who fired the fatal shots.
Prosecutors are not accusing Davis of pulling the trigger on the night of September 7, and instead plan to show that Davis made the calls that led to Shakur’s death, as well as providing the gun.
Davis pleaded not guilty to murder with a deadly weapon with the intent to promote, further or assist a criminal gang in Shakur’s death.
Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson, Davis’ nephew, has long been suspected of pulling the trigger, but charges were never brought against him. Anderson died two years after Shakur in an unrelated gang shootout in Compton.
Two others – Deandrae “Freaky” Smith and Terry “Bubble Up” Brown – were in the car with Davis and Anderson, but have since died as well.
The 2026 trial
On Monday, Davis sat in Clark County District Court as Nevada Judge Carli Kierny questioned 75 potential jurors about their suitability to serve in the trial, which is scheduled to last about a month.
On Monday, the former gang leader said that if he’s convicted, he wants the judge to decide his sentence and not the jury.
Binu Palal, the county’s chief deputy district attorney, told potential jurors they were in court for a murder trial involving Shakur.
Palal began listing names of people involved in the case to see if potential jurors were familiar with them, including Knight and Sean “Diddy” Combs.
Questions posed to the potential jurors also included their favourite books, movies, and whether they had listened to Shakur’s music, which one man said he had.
Prosecutors expect to call between 35 and 45 witnesses, ranging from people who saw Shakur’s last moments before he was shot to those who were in both Shakur and Davis’ orbits at the time.
Witnesses on the list include former South Side Crips affiliate Denvonta Lee, former Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, and members of Shakur’s family, although not everyone listed will testify.
In a grand jury testimony, Lee said rival gangs Crips and Mob Piru were connected to duelling record labels Death Row Records and Bad Boy Records.
Though he wasn’t there on the night of the shooting, Lee also said in his testimony that Anderson didn’t have a clear shot, so Smith took the gun and did the shooting. He also said Davis was in charge and gave the gun to Anderson, who then gave it to Smith.
Davis’ defence attorney is expected to call a handful of witnesses, including one expert in the area of false confessions and coercive interrogation techniques.
One potential witness is in a California prison and previously said he would not testify in Davis’ case.
Knight, who is serving a 28-year sentence for running over and killing a Compton businessman in January 2015, is the only other living eyewitness who was in one of the two vehicles that night, and his testimony could be key.
Jury selection continues this week.
With AP
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Kayla Olaya is a culture reporter at The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via email.
