A person who used to lead a street gang was taken into custody last Friday for allegedly killing the famous rapper Tupac Shakur in a shooting in Las Vegas almost 30 years ago. This incident, which was never solved, is a very important event in the history of rap music.
Duane “Keffe D” Davis, who police believe has been a suspect for a long time and has recently admitted his involvement in public statements, was arrested outside his home. This happened a day after a grand jury in Clark County, Nevada, accused him of a crime. In a quick court session on Friday, a judge ordered that Davis, who is 60 years old, should stay in jail without a chance for release until his first court appearance next Wednesday.
Davis is facing a charge of murder with a dangerous weapon for his supposed role in leading a group of men to shoot Tupac Shakur in a drive-by shooting near the Las Vegas strip in 1996.
Officials say that Davis was the one who gave the orders for a hasty plan to get back at Tupac for an incident where his nephew, Orlando Anderson, was beaten by Tupac and his group inside the MGM Grand Garden Arena on the night of September 7, 1996, shortly before the shooting occurred.
Davis planned and organized the crime, according to Metropolitan Police Department Lieutenant Jason Johansson.
There’s no information about whether Davis has a lawyer yet.
The police showed footage from a hotel that depicted a group of men hitting and kicking someone identified as Anderson. This led to a fight being broken up by security. One of the attackers was Marion “Suge” Knight, who co-founded Death Row Records, the company that produced Tupac’s music.
This incident, Johansson explained, ultimately led to Tupac Shakur being shot.
After getting a gun from an unnamed associate, Davis, along with Anderson and two others, Terrence Brown and Deandre Smith, got into a white Cadillac. They went after the black BMW that Knight had driven away with Tupac.
When they caught up with Shakur and Knight, shots were fired from the Cadillac into the BMW. Tupac was hit four times and passed away in the hospital six days later, at 25 years old.
Knight was also hit by a piece of a bullet but only had minor injuries. He was sent to prison the next month for breaking the terms of his probation in a previous assault case.
The authorities didn’t say who specifically shot Tupac. The other three people in the Cadillac with Davis have all passed away.
Another rival rap star, Christopher Wallace, known as Notorious B.I.G., was fatally shot in Los Angeles in March 1997. This murder remains unsolved. Wallace was involved in an ongoing feud between East Coast and West Coast rap artists before his death, and some speculated his killing might have been in retaliation for Tupac’s murder a few months earlier.
Rival gangs
Johansson explained that the violence at the MGM was caused by a feud between two rival street gangs from Los Angeles: the South Side Compton Crips, led by Duane, and Mob Piru, who were closely connected to Death Row Records and Knight.
Members of both groups were in Las Vegas that night to watch a big boxing match.
Detectives had figured out most of the details and people involved in the events leading up to the shooting within the first few months of their investigation. However, they didn’t have enough valid evidence to press criminal charges for a long time.
In 2018, Davis himself openly talked about his role in this homicide investigation in various media interviews and in his book, “Compton Street Legend,” which led to renewed efforts by the police to solve the case. This eventually led to a search warrant for Davis’ home in July, where they found more evidence that contributed to the indictment.
Shakur was a highly influential performer and is widely recognized as one of the greatest artists in rap music. He was also incredibly successful commercially, selling over 75 million records worldwide.
He was famous for using strong words in his songs, talking about violence, sex, and bad things that happen in tough neighborhoods. His album “All Eyez on Me,” which came out just before he passed away, celebrated his image as someone who lived outside the law.
People either really loved him or really didn’t like him because of his songs, which sometimes talked about violence and treating women badly. He had a lot of problems with the law, spending a good amount of the last two and a half years of his life either in court, jail, or the hospital.
After he died, he became even more popular, and in 2017, he was honored by being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Knight, who was his manager, admitted in a Los Angeles court in September 2018 that he was guilty of causing someone’s death in a hit-and-run accident in Compton in 2015. He accepted a 28-year prison sentence as part of a deal with the prosecutors, just days before his trial for murder was supposed to start.
SOURCE:FRANCE24