Tupac Shakur

On the night of September 7, 1996, rapper Tupac Shakur was shot in a drive-by attack on the edge of the Las Vegas Strip. Shakur, 25, had attended the Mike Tyson heavyweight bout at the MGM Grand earlier that evening with Death Row Records executive Marion "Suge" Knight. According to police accounts, hours before the shooting Shakur and members of his entourage were involved in a lobby altercation with a man later identified as Orlando "Baby Lane" Anderson, a member of the Compton-based South Side Crips. At about 11:15 p.m., as Shakur rode in a BMW driven by Knight and stopped at a red light near East Flamingo Road and Koval Lane in Paradise, Nevada, a white Cadillac pulled alongside and a gunman opened fire. Shakur was struck multiple times by rounds fired from a .40-caliber handgun. Knight was grazed.

Shakur was hospitalized at University Medical Center in critical condition and underwent surgery that included removal of his right lung. He died of his injuries six days later, on September 13, 1996, with authorities citing respiratory failure and cardiac arrest. His death, coming amid a widely publicized rivalry between East Coast and West Coast hip-hop figures, drew intense national attention. Despite that scrutiny, no one was charged for years, and the case remained officially unsolved for more than two and a half decades.

Over the years, investigators and journalists repeatedly pointed to Orlando Anderson as a suspect in the shooting. Anderson denied involvement and was never charged; he was killed in an unrelated gang shooting in Southern California in 1998. Attention also turned to Anderson's uncle, Duane "Keffe D" Davis, a self-described former gang figure who, in a 2018 memoir and in filmed interviews, publicly described being in the Cadillac and said he had supplied the gun used in the attack. Davis has said he was in the front passenger seat; accounts attributed to investigators allege Anderson was among those in the back of the vehicle. Davis's public statements would later become central to the prosecution.

On September 29, 2023 — roughly 27 years after the shooting — a Clark County grand jury indicted Davis on a charge of first-degree murder, and he was arrested. Prosecutors allege he orchestrated the drive-by and provided the firearm. Davis pleaded not guilty on November 2, 2023. It is important to note that Davis has been charged, not convicted; the allegations against him remain unproven, and he awaits trial. His defense has argued that his prior accounts were fabricated or exaggerated for profit and has cited claimed immunity agreements from earlier interviews with law enforcement.

Through 2024 and 2025 the prosecution advanced slowly. A judge set bail at $750,000 in January 2024, but Davis remained in custody. His attorneys sought dismissal, arguing his earlier statements were protected by immunity; after a lower court upheld the charges, the defense pursued an appeal to the Nevada Supreme Court. Separately, in April 2025 Davis was convicted in an unrelated jailhouse altercation and later sentenced to a term in state prison. His murder trial, originally slated for 2024, was repeatedly postponed; as of late 2025 the trial was reset for August 10, 2026, before District Court Judge Carli Kierny. As of mid-2026, the case is an active prosecution with no verdict reached, and the recorded status of "unsolved" should be updated to reflect a pending murder charge.