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<\/p>\nNearly 30 years after Tupac Shakur was gunned down near the Las Vegas Strip in a killing that rocked the rap world, the trial of the man prosecutors allege did everything but pull the trigger got underway Monday with new revelations.<\/p>\n
Nevada prosecutors allege Duane \u201cKeffe D\u201d Davis, a one-time Compton gang member, orchestrated Shakur\u2019s killing as revenge for an attack on his nephew hours earlier and are using Davis\u2019 own words in interviews and a book he co-authored as evidence.<\/p>\n
In opening statements, prosecutors said an ugly gang rivalry on the streets of Compton led to the slaying of Shakur, a famed rapper and actor, who died six days after he was shot.<\/p>\n
The Sept. 7, 1996, shooting, they said, was rooted in a war between Southside Crips-Burris Street, led by Davis, and Mob Piru, a gang long associated with Death Row Records. Shakur was closely affiliated with Death Row, and the record company\u2019s boss, Marion \u201cSuge\u201d Knight, was inside his car the night he was attacked.<\/p>\n
In court testimony Monday, it was revealed that Shakur was conscious after the shooting en route to the hospital but did not cooperate with authorities.<\/p>\n
The first witness, Garry Dale, a Las Vegas Metro police officer, testified that he saw Shakur pulled out of the car with gunshot wounds and rode in the ambulance with him.<\/p>\n
When he asked Shakur who shot him, the rapper replied, \u201c\u2018No, we\u2019ll take care of it,\u2019\u201d Dale said. \u201cI couldn\u2019t get him to talk any further.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Duane \u201cKeffe D\u201d Davis is accused of murder in the 1996 killing of hip-hop icon Tupac Shakur.<\/p>\n
(Steve Marcus \/ Associated Press)<\/p>\n
The incident, according to Clark County Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Binu Palal, followed a violent confrontation at a Mike Tyson fight earlier that night in Las Vegas. Palal showed video of Shakur\u2019s entourage attacking Davis\u2019 nephew Orlando Anderson. Travon Lane, a Mob Piru member, had spotted Anderson in the MGM Grand hotel lobby. Months earlier, Anderson stole Lane\u2019s Death Row Records chain in the Lakewood mall during an attack. <\/p>\n
The rivalry between the groups grew after the Southside Crips became the West Coast security for Sean \u201cDiddy\u201d Combs\u2019 record label, prosecutors said.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s be clear, Duane Davis did not pull the trigger. But he did plan the shooting in retaliation of the beating of his nephew,\u201d Palal said. \u201cRemarkably, you will learn that from Duane Davis himself.\u201d<\/p>\n
Palal noted that Shakur\u2019s shooting was followed by numerous slayings in Compton, including that of an 11-year-old girl.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn this world, silence means survival,\u201d Palal said. \u201cThe one person who has had a hard time being silent is Duane Davis.\u201d <\/p>\n
The prosecutor played parts of an interview with a Los Angeles Police Department federal task force in 2008 in which Davis acknowledged his role in the rapper\u2019s fatal shooting. They also cited other interviews as well as his own memoir.<\/p>\n
The prosecutor said Davis got the gun from Eric Zip Martin, an East Coast drug dealer associated with Combs\u2019 Bad Boy Entertainment. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe admits putting the gun he obtained that night in the back seat of the vehicle so the shooters could shoot,\u201d the prosecutor said. \u201cYou will learn that Duane Davis got the gun. … You will learn that he got into a white Cadillac. You will learn when the opportunity presented itself for retribution, Duane Davis made sure that the shooter was armed and ready to execute their revenge.\u201d<\/p>\n
Palal said Davis and his crew set out in search of Knight and Shakur. In multiple accounts, including in his book \u201cCompton Street Legend,\u201d Davis wrote that they spotted the Death Row caravan stopped at a red light, with Shakur waving to female fans while hanging out of the BMW window. <\/p>\n
\u201cTupac, he gave himself away,\u201d Davis said in the recording played in court. \u201cOtherwise, they would\u2019ve got away.\u201d<\/p>\n
Davis was arrested in 2023 and indicted for masterminding the killing and providing the gun.<\/p>\n
![\"Rapper](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/1786542858_515_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Rapper Tupac Shakur is show at Club Amazon in New York on July 23, 1993.<\/p>\n
(Al Pereira \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n
Michael Sanft, Davis\u2019 defense attorney, told jurors there will be no evidence linking his client to the shooting. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere are no facts to point to Keffe \u2014 not one,\u201d he said. \u201cYou\u2019re going to hear about this over and over again.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sanft recounted decades of probes and noted that prior investigations did not take his client\u2019s statements seriously because they were not credible. \u201cHe treats that book like it\u2019s fact,\u201d Sanft said of a lead detective in the case. The defense attorney, in an unusual move, repeatedly undermined his own client\u2019s credibility.<\/p>\n
Sanft portrayed Las Vegas police as incompetent, with lost records, and the LAPD and then Compton police as corrupt. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhat facts do they have to put Keffe D in a car in 1996? When you look at the video in 1996, do you see Keffe D?\u201d he added, referencing the lobby beating. <\/p>\n
Sanft said Death Row\u2019s security chief was Reggie Wright Jr., a felon and former Compton police officer whose father led the Compton police gang unit. He said the former officer was not with Knight and ordered his security team not to carry firearms. The defense lawyer cast Davis\u2019 memoir as fiction and said there was no evidence his client was in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n
The prosecutor, however, told jurors that Davis, from 1998 to 2023, made several incriminating statements and, in 1998, admitted to the FBI to being in Las Vegas at the time of Shakur\u2019s slaying. <\/p>\n
Davis, according to prosecutors, told investigators during a secret meeting he \u201cwas mad about Orlando Anderson\u2019s beating\u201d and he was the boss who got the firearm and was in the white Cadillac. When Greg Kading, an LAPD detective who led the task force, left policing and later published a book revealing Davis\u2019 role, it made Davis want to go public, according to the prosecution.<\/p>\n
\u201cGreg Kading is profiting off Duane Davis\u2019 life story,\u201d Palal said. By the time the book was released, the others who were allegedly in the car the night of the shooting were dead. Anderson was killed and Smith passed away. In 2019, after a series of interviews, Davis published his own book, which, full of bravado, gave a similar account of Shakur\u2019s killing as that of the federal task force. The prosecutor then played an interview from the time of the book\u2019s release, in which Davis justified his actions.<\/p>\n
![\"Rap](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/1786542858_578_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Rap mogul Marion \u201cSuge\u201d Knight appears in court in 2018 in an unrelated case.<\/p>\n
(Irfan Khan \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n
Ingrid Stokes, one of four women in a car that had been following Shakur the night of the attack testified that she freaked out and screamed, then fled the scene, telling police she \u201cdidn\u2019t see anything\u201d because \u201csnitches get stitches.\u201d<\/p>\n
A third witness who testified Monday, former Las Vegas Metro Det. Brent Becker, said he interviewed Knight about the beating in the MGM Grand lobby, and Knight said he basically \u201cdidn\u2019t know anything.\u201d By 1997, detectives suspected that Davis was in the Cadillac that opened fire on Shakur, he testified.<\/p>\n
Davis, now 63, has pleaded not guilty to murder with a deadly weapon with the intent to promote, further or assist a criminal gang. In recent weeks, he\u2019s denied being in the Cadillac or Las Vegas that night and, in interviews with Las Vegas TV stations, blamed a former head of Death Row Records security. <\/p>\n
\u201cI had nothing to do with nobody\u2019s murder,\u201d he told interviewers. <\/p>\n
Prosecutors are expected to call witnesses to support Davis\u2019 claims from over the years. Davis\u2019 lawyers will seek to portray him as a fabricator \u2014 his bragging is all fiction. Davis has done the same with Las Vegas reporters.<\/p>\n
\u201cI did not write the book; a ghostwriter wrote that book,\u201d Davis said in a recent jailhouse interview. \u201cI was trying to make my family some money.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nearly 30 years after Tupac Shakur was gunned down near the Las Vegas Strip in a killing that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":430754,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[56982,24264,283,8533,9905,1520,69417,70362,131,133,132,172984,172983,1869,172986,172985,135,53688],"class_list":["post-435741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-anderson","tag-book","tag-car","tag-client","tag-davis","tag-interview","tag-knight","tag-las-vegas-strip","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news","tag-michael-sanft","tag-nevada-prosecutor","tag-night","tag-numerous-murder","tag-palal","tag-shooting","tag-tupac-shakur"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=435741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435741\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/430754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=435741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=435741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=435741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}