Tupac Shakur

Case background and investigation

Rapper Tupac Shakur was in Las Vegas on September 7, 1996, to attend the Mike Tyson and Bruce Seldon boxing match at the MGM Grand. According to the Wikipedia account of the case, after the fight Shakur and others with him attacked Orlando Anderson, a member of the rival South Side Compton Crips, in the hotel lobby. Prosecutors later described this beating as the motive for the shooting.

At about 11:15 p.m. that night, Shakur was riding in a black BMW driven by Death Row Records co-founder Marion "Suge" Knight when a white Cadillac pulled up beside the car at a red light at East Flamingo Road and Koval Lane and shots were fired from it. NPR reported that Knight was also wounded and survived. Shakur was taken to University Medical Center of Southern Nevada, where he died on September 13, 1996, at age 25.

For decades no one was charged. Orlando Anderson, whom prosecutors at the 2026 trial alleged had fired the shots, was never charged and, according to Wikipedia, was killed in an unrelated shooting in 1998. Duane "Keffe D" Davis, Anderson's uncle and a former leader of the South Side Compton Crips, later spoke publicly about the shooting in interviews and in his 2019 memoir, "Compton Street Legend," saying he had been in the Cadillac and had passed a gun to the back seat, according to NPR.

On July 17, 2023, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department searched a house in Henderson, Nevada, in connection with the case, NPR reported; according to Wikipedia, the home belonged to Davis's wife. On September 29, 2023, a Clark County grand jury indicted Davis on a charge of murder with a deadly weapon, and he was arrested the same day. He is the only person ever charged in the killing.

Davis's trial took place in August 2026. Prosecutors argued that Davis did not fire the shots but directed the attack as a gang leader, in retaliation for the lobby beating of his nephew; the defense said Davis's public statements were embellishments meant to make money and that there was no physical evidence. On August 31, 2026, after deliberating for about three hours, the jury found Davis guilty of first-degree murder with use of a deadly weapon. NPR reported that prosecutors dropped a gang enhancement. According to NBC Los Angeles, Judge Carli Kierny ordered Davis held without bail and set sentencing for October 13, 2026.