After two weeks on trial, the Nevada jury found Duane “Keefe D” Davis guilty on all charges on Aug. 31. Davis will be held without bail until his sentencing on Oct 13.
30 years of mystery and wondering, the case of rap icon Tupac Shakur’s 1996 death went to trial Aug. 10 as Davis, 63, faced one charge of murder with a deadly weapon with the intent to promote, further, or assist a criminal gang in Shakur’s death.
Shakur was shot in Las Vegas on Sept. 7, 1996. He was in a black BMW with music mogul Marion “Suge” Knight on their way to Club 662, where Shakur was scheduled to perform, when a white Cadillac pulled up beside them. Gunfire erupted. Shakur, who was in the passenger seat, was shot multiple times and died six days later, while Knight survived.
The case went cold until recent years, when public statements and Davis’s tell-all memoir revived it. He was a leader of the South Side Compton Crips at the time of Shakur’s death. Davis was arrested in 2023 and pleaded not guilty.
“Whoever had anything to do with it, whoever set it up, whoever had any hand in it should be locked up in prison,” said Shakur’s cousin, Kendrick Lesane.
Davis’s Memoir, “Compton Street Legends,” was his downfall from freedom, as the book describes a story very similar to the Las Vegas shooting and details his exact role. The book says that 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. While the book did bring attention to Davis, it was his association with other gang members that was really on the radar of the police, which ended up being the reason Davis is on trial now.
Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson, Davis’ nephew, has long been considered the suspect who pulled the trigger, but charges were never brought against him in the killing. He died two years after Shakur died in an unrelated gang shootout in Compton, California.
Two others — Deandrae “Freaky” Smith and Terry “Bubble Up” Brown — were in the car with Davis and Anderson, but they have since died as well.
Prosecutors did not argue that Davis is the one who pulled the trigger that night. Instead, prosecutors proved that Davis made the calls that led to Shakur’s death and provided the gun used to shoot Shakur. The alleged shooter was his nephew, Orlando Anderson, who sat in the back seat and allegedly fired the gun at Tupac. Anderson was killed in 1998 in an unrelated gang shooting, but before his death, he denied shooting Tupac.
