June date for ex-gang leader in Tupac murder trial

LAS VEGAS (AP):

A Nevada judge set a June 3 date for the murder trial of a former street gang leader who has become the only person ever charged in the 1996 killing of hip hop music icon Tupac Shakur in Las Vegas.

Duane ‘Keffe D’ Davis, 60, made a brief court appearance in shackles Tuesday. He had pleaded not guilty last Thursday and remains jailed in Las Vegas. His lawyers said they intend to file documents seeking his release on bail ahead of trial.

Davis, who was arrested September 29, has said publicly in recent years and in a 2019 tell-all memoir that he orchestrated the drive-by shooting that killed Shakur and wounded rap music mogul Marion ‘Suge’ Knight.

Knight, now 58, is serving 28 years in a California prison for the death of a Compton businessman in 2015.

Davis is the only person still alive who was in the vehicle from which shots were fired.

Prosecutors allege the 1996 shooting followed clashes between rival East Coast and West Coast groups for dominance in “gangsta rap”. The grand jury was told that Shakur, 25, was involved in a brawl at a Las Vegas Strip casino with Davis’ nephew, Orlando ‘Baby Lane’ Anderson, shortly before the shooting.

Anderson, then 22, was in the car with Davis but denied involvement in Shakur’s killing. Anderson died two years later in a shooting in Compton. Davis implicated himself during multiple interviews and in his memoir that described his life leading a Crips gang sect in Compton. He wrote that he was promised immunity from prosecution in 2010 when he told authorities what he knew about the fatal shootings of Shakur and rival rapper Christopher ‘The Notorious B.I.G.’ Wallace six months later in Los Angeles.

Shakur, who was nominated for six Grammy Awards, was inducted in 2017 into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and also received a posthumous star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. A street near where Shakur lived in California was renamed last Friday in his honour.