[New post] Tupac Shakur’s 1996 killing: Man tied to suspected shooter arrested, AP sources say
gqlshare posted: "By RIO YAMAT and KEN RITTERLAS VEGAS — Las Vegas police have arrested a man in the deadly 1996 drive-by shooting of rapper Tupac Shakur, a long-awaited break in a case that has frustrated investigators and fascinated the public ever since the hip-hop icon" Daily Democrat
LAS VEGAS — Las Vegas police have arrested a man in the deadly 1996 drive-by shooting of rapper Tupac Shakur, a long-awaited break in a case that has frustrated investigators and fascinated the public ever since the hip-hop icon was gunned down on the Las Vegas Strip 27 years ago.
Duane "Keffe D" Davis was arrested early Friday morning, although the exact charge or charges were not immediately clear, according to two officials with first-hand knowledge of the arrest. They were not authorized to speak publicly ahead of an expected indictment later Friday.
Davis has long been known to investigators and has himself admitted in interviews and in his 2019 tell-all memoir, "Compton Street Legend," that he was in the Cadillac where the gunfire erupted during the September 1996 drive-by shooting. Shakur was 25 when he was gunned down.
Police reported collecting multiple computers, a cellphone and hard drive, a Vibe magazine that featured Shakur, several .40-caliber bullets, two "tubs containing photographs" and a copy of Davis' memoir.
FILE – Rapper Tupac Shakur attends a voter registration event in South Central Los Angeles, Aug. 15, 1996. Las Vegas police said they have made an arrest, Friday, Sept. 29, 2023, for the first time in the 1996 killing of rapper Tupac Shakur. (AP Photo/Frank Wiese, File)
In the book, Davis said he broke his silence over Tupac's killing in 2010 during a closed-door meeting with federal and local authorities. At the time, he was 46 and facing life in prison on drug charges when he agreed to speak with the authorities.
"They promised they would shred the indictment and stop the grand jury if I helped them out," he wrote.
He has described himself as one of the last living witnesses to the shooting.
On the night of Sept. 7, 1996. Shakur was in a BMW driven by Death Row Records founder Marion "Suge" Knight in a convoy of about 10 cars. They were waiting at a red light when a white Cadillac pulled up next to them and gunfire erupted.
Shakur was shot multiple times and died a week later.
In 2018, after a cancer diagnosis, Davis admitted publicly in an interview for a BET show to being inside the Cadillac during the attack. He implicated his nephew, Orlando "Baby Lane" Anderson, saying he was one of two people in the back seat where the shots were fired.
The shooting happened shortly after a casino brawl earlier in the evening involving Anderson, Shakur and others.
Anderson denied any involvement in the Shakur shooting. He died two years later in a shooting in Compton, California.
Shakur was feuding at the time with rap rival Biggie Smalls, also known as the Notorious B.I.G., who was fatally shot in March 1997. At the time, both rappers were in the middle of an East Coast-West Coast rivalry that primarily defined the hip-hop scene during the mid-1990s.
Greg Kading, a retired Los Angeles police detective who spent years investigating the Shakur killing and wrote a book about it, said he would not be surprised by Davis's indictment and arrest.
"It's so long overdue," 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."
Kading said he interviewed Davis in 2008 and 2009, during Los Angeles police investigations of the killings of Shakur in Las Vegas and the slaying of Biggie Smalls.
Kading said also that he talked with a Las Vegas police detective about the case, including after the SWAT raid in July at the home in Henderson.
The former Los Angeles police detective said he believed the investigation gained new momentum in recent years following Davis's public descriptions of his role in the killing, including his 2019 memoir.
"It's those events that have given Las Vegas the ammunition and the leverage to move forward," Kading said. "Prior to Keffe D's public declarations, the cases were unprosecutable as they stood."
"He put himself squarely in the middle of the conspiracy," Kading said of Davis and the Shakur slaying. "He had acquired the gun, he had given the gun to the shooter and he had been present in the vehicle when they hunted down and located both Tupac and Suge (Knight)."
Kading noted that Davis is the last living person among the four people who were in the vehicle from which shots were fired at Shakur and Knight. Others were Anderson, Davis's nephew; Terrence "Bubble Up" Brown and DeAndre "Freaky" Smith.
"It's a concerted effort of conspirators," Kading said, adding that he believed that because the killing was premeditated Davis could face a first-degree murder charge.
"All the other direct conspirators or participants are all dead," Kading said. "Keffe D is the last man standing among the individuals that conspired to kill Tupac."
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