Las Vegas police have arrested a man believed to be connected to the suspected shooter responsible for the unsolved murder of rap legend Tupac Shakur.
As BLACK ENTERPRISE previously covered, a break in the case that has captivated Tupac fans and crime investigators alike since 1996 came in July 2023, when police determined there was enough evidence to order the raid of a home in Henderson, Nevada.
At the time, no one was named; however, the person of interest has now been identified as Duane “Keffe D” Davis. On Sept. 29, Las Vegas law enforcement arrested Davis on unidentified charges connected to the shooting, and he is expected to be indicted.
In 2019, Davis authored a memoir, Compton Street Legend, in which he detailed the events of Sept. 7, 1996, that led to the untimely demise of Shakur in a Las Vegas hospital six days later. He claimed to be one of two living eyewitnesses to the fatal shooting and implicated his nephew, Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson, as one of two possible shooters in the backseat of the Cadillac long believed to be the vehicle involved.
Davis said that he came clean to federal authorities in 2010 while facing a life sentence in prison connected to drug charges.
“They promised they would shred the indictment and stop the grand jury if I helped them out,” he wrote in Compton Street Legend.
Law enforcement has been interested in Davis’ involvement in the shooting for many years, the Associated Press reports.
“It’s so long overdue,” said Greg Kading, a police detective who investigated the “Dear Mama” rapper’s killing. “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.”
Nevada police have spent the years following the release of Davis’ memoir collecting enough evidence to firmly consider him a viable suspect in Shakur’s murder, the outlet reports.
“He put himself squarely in the middle of the conspiracy,” Kading said.
“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].”
Several murders that law enforcement believe were connected to that of Shakur’s occurred in the years following his death, including that of rapper Christopher “Biggie” Wallace. Davis is one of the last living connections to the murders of two of the most cherished figures in hip-hop.
“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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