Man Arrested In Connection With 1996 Killing Of Tupac Shakur

A man has been detained by Las Vegas police in connection with the 1996 drive-by shooting of Tupac Shakur.

Since the hip-hop artist was murdered on the Las Vegas Strip 27 years ago, the case has baffled detectives and captivated the public. The arrest marks a long-awaited breakthrough in the case.

On Friday morning, Duane “Keffe D” Davis was taken into custody, though it was not immediately clear what charges, if any, he was facing. Later on Friday, a formal indictment is anticipated.

Davis, who has long been known to detectives, acknowledged being in the Cadillac when the drive-by shooting in September 1996 broke out in interviews in his 2019 tell-all memoir, Compton Street Legend.

Two months have passed since Las Vegas police searched Davis’s wife’s home in the nearby Henderson neighborhood on July 17. According to documents, investigators were seeking items “concerning the murder of Tupac Shakur”.

Multiple computers, a smartphone, a hard drive, a Vibe magazine featuring Tupac Shakur, several 40-caliber bullets, two “tubs containing photographs,” and a copy of Davis’ 2019 tell-all memoir were all reportedly seized by police.

In the book, Davis claimed that during a private meeting with federal and local officials in 2010, he finally broke his silence over Tupac’s murder. He was 46 years old, facing a life sentence for narcotics offenses, when he decided to cooperate with the police.

“They assured me that if I assisted them, they would destroy the indictment and stop the grand jury,” he said.

He has identified himself as one of the final living witnesses to the shooting. Shakur was 25 years old when he was killed in a drive-by shooting close to the Las Vegas Strip on the evening of September 7, 1996.

The rapper was traveling in a BMW being driven by Marion “Suge” Knight, the founder of Death Row Records, in a group of roughly ten vehicles. When a white Cadillac came up next to them as they waited at a red light, gunshots broke out.

Shakur was shot several times and died a week later.

Davis publicly acknowledged being inside the Cadillac during the attack in a BET show interview in 2018 after receiving a cancer diagnosis. Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson, one of two persons in the back seat where the shots were fired, was named as the person he accused.

The altercation, which involved Anderson, Shakur, and others earlier in the evening in a casino, erupted shortly after the shooting.

Anderson denies having any part in the shooting of Shakur. He passed away in a shooting in Compton, California, two years later.

Shakur his away while his fourth solo album, All Eyez on Me, which had sold about five million copies, was still at the top of the charts. Shakur, who has received six Grammy nominations, is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most versatile rappers of all time.

Shakur and Biggie Smalls, popularly known as the Notorious B.I.G., a rival rapper who was tragically shot in March 1997, were engaged in a fight at the time. The East Coast-West Coast rivalry between the two rappers at the time largely shaped the hip-hop scene in the mid-1990s.

Davis’s charge and arrest, according to Greg Kading, a retired Los Angeles police officer who spent years looking into the Shakur shooting and authored a book about it, won’t surprise him.

“It’s so long overdue,” Mr. Kading told The Associated Press during a recent interview. “People have been yearning for him to be arrested for a long time. It’s never been unsolved in our minds. It’s been unprosecuted.”

As part of the Los Angeles police’s inquiries into the deaths of Biggie Smalls and Assata Shakur in Las Vegas, Mr. Kading claimed to have spoken with Davis in 2008 and 2009.