A former Southern California street gang leader pleaded not guilty Thursday to orchestrating a drive-by shooting that killed Tupac Shakur in 1996 in Las Vegas.
Duane Keith “Keffe D” Davis, the only person still alive who was in the vehicle from which shots were fired and the only person ever charged with a crime in the case, stood in shackles before Clark County District Judge Tierra Jones.
Special public defenders Robert Arroyo and Charles Cano represented Davis in court Thursday. Davis lost his bid to hire defense attorney, Ross Goodman, who spoke on Davis’ behalf two weeks ago, saying prosecutors lack witnesses and key evidence, including a gun or vehicle, for the killing committed 27 years ago.
Davis, 60, is originally from Compton, California. He was arrested Sept. 29 outside a home in suburban Henderson where Las Vegas police served a search warrant July 17, drawing renewed attention to one of hip-hop music’s most enduring mysteries. Davis remains jailed without bail, did not testify before the grand jury that indicted him, and declined from jail to speak with The Associated Press.
The indictment alleges Davis obtained and provided a gun to someone in the back seat of a Cadillac before the car-to-car gunfire that mortally wounded Shakur and wounded rap music mogul Marion “Suge” Knight at an intersection just off the Las Vegas Strip. Shakur died a week later. He was 25.
Knight, now 58, is in prison in California, serving a 28-year sentence for the death of a Compton businessman in 2015. He has not responded to messages through his attorneys seeking comment about Davis’ arrest.
Prosecutors allege that Shakur’s killing in Las Vegas came out of competition between East Coast members of a Bloods gang sect and West Coast groups of a Crips sect, including Davis, for dominance in a musical genre dubbed “gangsta rap.”
The grand jury was told the Sept. 7,…
Read the full article here
