Tupac Shakur. Photo By Raymond Boyd/Getty Images.
An arrest has been made in the 1996 murder of Tupac Shakur, the Associated Press reports. Duane “Keffe D” Davis, a California-born former member of the South Side Compton Crips, was arrested on Friday morning in Las Vegas; hours later, prosecutors revealed he had been charged with murder with use of a deadly weapon.
Chief Deputy District Attorney Marc DiGiacomo called Davis the “on-ground, on-site commander” who “ordered [Shakur's] death,” according to remarks obtained by the AP. A Nevada grand jury returned the indictment on Friday after being seated for “several months,” DiGiacomo said
Duane Davis has long been connected to the shooting. In 2019 Davis confessed to being in the Cadillac that fired on Tupac’s the night of his death, though he claimed that his nephew Orlando Anderson was the shooter. The remarks were made during a proffer session, where individuals can make incriminating statements without them being used against them in court. Davis wrote about the event in his 2019 memoir Compton Street Cowboy.
In July 2023, Las Vegas police executed a search warrant on the Las Vegas home of Davis’s wife in connection with Shakur’s death, recovering items including “several tablets, an iPhone, [and] five computers” as well as hard drives and a USB.
Tupac Shakur was shot and killed on September 7, 1996 in Las Vegas. His case has remained unsolved since, with local police roundly criticized for mishandling the case.
This post was updated on Friday, September 29 at 2:28 ET to include the specific charge.
