Killing of Tupac Shakur

On the night of September 7, 1996, Tupac Shakur, a 25-year-old American rapper, was riding as a passenger in a car driven by Death Row Records founder Suge Knight when the vehicle stopped at a red light at East Flamingo Road and Koval Lane in Paradise, Nevada. A white Cadillac pulled alongside and a shooter in the back seat fired a .40-caliber Glock 22 pistol into the car. Shakur was struck four times — twice in the chest, once in the arm, and once in the thigh — while Knight was grazed by bullet fragmentation. Shakur died six days later, on September 13, 1996, at University Medical Center of Southern Nevada, after his mother, Afeni Shakur, made the decision to cease further medical treatment following respiratory failure and cardiac arrest.

Earlier that evening, Shakur and Knight had attended a boxing match at the MGM Grand, after which Shakur was involved in an assault on Orlando Anderson, a member of the South Side Compton Crips, in the hotel lobby. Anderson was later suspected in the murder but denied involvement and was never charged; he was killed in an unrelated gang shootout in 1998. The shooting is reported to have precipitated a period of gang violence between the South Side Compton Crips and Mob Piru Bloods in Compton, resulting in multiple shootings and deaths in the days that followed.

The investigation, led by Las Vegas police, stalled for years amid reported lack of cooperation from Shakur's entourage and Knight. A 2002 Los Angeles Times investigative series by reporter Chuck Philips concluded that the South Side Crips carried out the shooting to avenge Anderson's beating, and that Las Vegas police had made significant investigative missteps, including failing to follow up on witnesses and leads. Over subsequent years, various individuals — including Death Row associates and, in a 2018 documentary, Duane "Keefe D" Davis, Anderson's uncle — offered accounts placing themselves or others at or near the scene, though the identity of the shooter remained publicly unconfirmed for years.

On September 29, 2023, following a search of a Henderson, Nevada home in July 2023, Duane "Keefe D" Davis was arrested and charged with first-degree murder in Shakur's death, based on a grand jury indictment. Davis pleaded not guilty in November 2023. Prosecutors confirmed they would not seek the death penalty. After his trial was rescheduled multiple times, Davis was tried in Las Vegas in August 2026. Prosecutors did not allege that he fired the shots; they argued that he obtained the gun and orchestrated the attack. On August 31, 2026, the jury convicted him of murder with use of a deadly weapon, the first conviction in the case. He is scheduled to be sentenced on October 13, 2026, and faces up to life in prison without the possibility of parole; he told the court he plans to appeal. Davis was separately serving a sentence for a jailhouse fight conviction unrelated to the Shakur case. During grand jury proceedings, a gang affiliate testified that another individual, not Anderson, may have fired the fatal shots.