Tupac Shakur Murder Trial: Duane Keith Davis Found Guilty of Orchestrating Drive-by Killing

Duane Keith Davis was found guilty of orchestrating the 1996 murder of Tupac Shakur on Monday, nearly 30 years after the hip-hop icon was killed in a drive-by shooting. A jury in Las Vegas found the 63-year-old guilty after three hours of closed-door deliberation. He was first arrested and indicted for his involvement in the crime in September 2023. Shakur’s 1996 shooting death has long been an unsolved mystery, but Davis’ conviction after a three-week trial appears to bring some additional closure to the event triggered by a violent feud between West Coast and East Coast hip-hop labels that bore fatal consequences. Duane “Keefe D” Davis was arrested three years ago, and a Nevada grand jury soon indicted him on one count of murder with a deadly weapon. Davis maintained his innocence and said he invented the story to sell his memoir. He had previously admitted in interviews and in his 2019 memoir, “Compton Street Legend,” that he was in the Cadillac that pulled up alongside Suge Knight’s car during the drive-by shooting that took Shakur’s life. Clark County Chief Deputy District Attorney Marc DiGiacomo described Davis at the time as the person who “ordered the death” of the hip-hip icon, who was 25 when he was gunned down. Davis was also named a defendant earlier this year in a wrongful death lawsuit filed by Shakur’s surviving family, who said in the compliant that “there remain individuals who were involved in Tupac’s murder who, for 30 years, have not been held accountable for their crimes.” Shakur, who also used the stage name 2Pac, was in Vegas on the night of Sept. 7, 1996, to celebrate his business partner Tracy Danielle Robinson’s birthday. He also attended a Mike Tyson boxing match with Death Row Records founder Knight at the MGM Grand. Around 11:15 p.m. that night, a white late-model Cadillac sedan pulled up to the passenger side of Knight’s BMW on the Las Vegas Strip and repeatedly fired, striking Shakur four times. Bullets hit his arm, thigh and he was hit twice in the chest, with one bullet entering his right lung. Shakur was taken to the University Medical Center of Southern Nevada, where he died from internal bleeding six days later. In addition to being one of the most successful rappers of all time, Shakur also acted in a number of films, including John Singleton’s “Poetic Justice” and Ernest Dickerson’s “Juice.” In June 2023, Shakur received a posthumous star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.