Las Vegas police have arrested a man in connection with the 1996 drive-by shooting of Tupac Shakur, a long-awaited breakthrough in one of hip-hop's most infamous unsolved murders. Duane 'Keffe D' Davis, 60, was taken into custody on Friday after a grand jury indicted him on one count of murder with a deadly weapon in affiliation with a criminal gang.
Davis, a former Los Angeles drug dealer and ex-leader of the South Side Crips, has described himself as one of the last living witnesses to the shooting. Prosecutors allege he acted as the 'on-ground, on-site commander' who ordered Shakur's death in a bid for revenge. He was arrested while walking near his home in Henderson, a Las Vegas suburb, and was denied bail.
Davis has long been known to investigators. In interviews and his 2019 memoir, Compton Street Legend, he admitted he was in the front passenger seat of the white Cadillac from which gunfire erupted on 7 September 1996. Shakur, then 25, was shot four times and died six days later. Davis's late nephew, Orlando 'Baby Lane' Anderson, was considered a suspect but denied involvement and was killed in 1998.
The arrest follows a police raid in July on the home of Davis's wife, during which officers seized computers, a cellphone, a hard drive, a Vibe magazine featuring Shakur, and several .40-calibre bullets. In 2018, Davis publicly admitted in a BET interview to being inside the Cadillac, implicating Anderson as one of the shooters. Las Vegas sheriff Kevin McMahill said Davis's 'own words reinvigorated' the case.
Clark County district attorney Steve Wolfson said: 'It has often been said that justice delayed is justice denied. Not in this case. Today, justice will be served.' Davis, who has faced life in prison before on drug charges, said in a March interview that he was not scared of jail. He is expected to appear in court in the coming days.
