Las Vegas police have arrested a man in the deadly 1996 drive-by shooting of Tupac Shakur.
The man’s arrest is a long-awaited break in a case that has lingered since the hip-hop icon was gunned down on the Las Vegas Strip 27 years ago.
ABC News reports that Duane “Keffe D” Davis was arrested early Friday morning. However, the exact charge or charges were not immediately precise, according to two officials with first-hand knowledge of the arrest.
They were not authorised to speak publicly before an expected indictment later Friday.
Davis has long been known to investigators and has admitted in interviews and his 2019 tell-all memoir, “Compton Street Legend,” that he was in the Cadillac where the gunfire erupted during the September 1996 drive-by shooting.
Shakur was 25 when he was gunned down. The rapper was in a BMW driven by Death Row Records founder Marion “Suge” Knight in a convoy of about ten cars.
They were waiting at a red light when a white Cadillac pulled up next to them, and gunfire erupted. Shakur was shot multiple times and died a week later.
The arrest comes two months after Las Vegas police raided his wife’s home on July 17 in neighbouring Henderson. Documents said police were looking for items “concerning the murder of Tupac Shakur.”
Police reported collecting multiple computers, a cellphone and hard drive, a Vibe magazine that featured Shakur, several .40-caliber bullets, two “tubs containing photographs”, and a copy of Davis’ 2019 tell-all memoir, “Compton Street Legend.”
In the book, Davis said he broke his silence over Tupac’s killing in 2010 during a closed-door meeting with federal and local authorities.
At the time, he was 46 and facing life in prison on drug charges when he agreed to speak with the authorities.
Greg Kading, a retired Los Angeles police detective who spent years investigating the Shakur killing and wrote a book about it, said he would not be surprised by Davis’s indictment and arrest.
“All the other direct conspirators or participants are all dead,” Kading said.
