Police make arrest tied to Tupac Shakur’s killing — report – DW – 09/29/2023

US news agency the Associated Press (AP) reported on Friday that Las Vegas police had made an arrest in connection with the 1996 killing of hip hop musician and actor Tupac Shakur in the city. 

AP cited two unnamed sources with “firsthand knowledge of the arrest.” It said the nature of the charge or charges was not clear — and that an indictment was expected to be published later on Friday. 

In July this year, police announced a house search conducted in connection with what for years had seemed like a cold case.

One potential suspect well known

The reports could concern Duane “Keffe D” Davis, who claims to have been in the car from which Tupac was shot that night, and who wrote about his version of events in his memoir, “Compton Street Legend.” 

Davis, now 60, was a member of a Compton gang in Los Angeles in 1990s, the South Side Compton Crips.

He has in the past alleged that a bounty put out against Tupac by a rival rapper, Sean “Diddy” Combs (known at the time as Puff Daddy), ultimately led to his death.

According to his version of events Davis was in the white Cadillac from which Tupac was shot when another man, Orlando Andersen fired the shots. Andersen was shot and killed in an unrelated gang shootout in 1998 aged 23.

But details of the shooting are disputed to this day. Others have said the motive lay in a fight that Tupac and his entourage had been involved in with a rival gang a few hours earlier, with the shooting meant to serve as retribution.

The residence Las Vegas police searched in the nearby suburb of Henderson in July belonged to Davis’ wife.

Police said they collected multiple computers, a cellphone and hard drive, a Vibe magazine that featured Shakur, several .40-caliber bullets, two “tubs containing photographs” and a copy of Davis’ memoir.

Shot in 1996, succumbed to injuries days later

Shakur was wounded in a drive-by shooting on September 7, 1996, and died in a hospital six days later at the age of 25. He was an award-winning rapper, activist and actor who sold more than 75 million records worldwide, many of them posthumously. 

Although New York-born, he also signed for the West Coast record company Death Row Records and became the face of their rivalry with the East Coast label Bad Boy Entertainment.

His rivalry with East Coast rapper The Notorious B.I.G. (also known as Biggie Smalls, born Christopher Wallace) was a catalyst in his fame and was even blamed by some for his death. Some six months after Shakur’s death, The Notorious B.I.G. was also shot dead.

msh/jcg (AP, Reuters)