Jurors Hear Duane Davis Describe Night Tupac Shakur Was Shot
In a Nevada trial, prosecutors presented a 2008 police interview in which Duane Davis recounts the events surrounding Tupac Shakur’s 1996 murder, matching details from his 2019 memoir.
During Thursday’s trial of Duane Davis, who is accused of orchestrating the September 1996 killing of rapper Tupac Shakur in Las Vegas, prosecutors played a 2008 recorded interview Davis gave to law-enforcement. The interview, made under a proffer agreement related to separate drug charges, mirrors many of the accounts Davis later published in his 2019 memoir, Compton Street Legend.
In the recording, Davis describes how, after a fight involving his nephew Orlando Anderson and members of Death Row Records at the MGM Grand, he and his crew went to Suge Knight’s Las Vegas Club 662 before leaving to search for Shakur. He recounts hearing fans chant “Tupac! Tupac! Tupac!” as the rapper waved from a car window, and later describes his vehicle making a U-turn to approach Shakur’s car. Davis says he handed a gun to associate Deandre Smith, who was seated in the back, and that the shooting resulted in about six bullets being fired.
Detective Greg Kading, who conducted the interview, reminded Davis that his statements would not be used against him at the time. Prosecutors argue that Davis’s later public statements and his memoir nullified that protection, and the judge allowed the tape to be shown to the jury.
The testimony also touched on the aftermath, with Davis saying his group abandoned their car at a nearby location, leaving the firearm on a tire, and later retrieved it. Investigators questioned the logic of leaving the gun, which Davis acknowledged.
The court heard that Davis’s account differs from his book on two points: the placement of the gun in the back seat and who initiated the gunfire. In the memoir, Davis claims the gun was tossed into the back seat and that Shakur reached for a weapon before the shooting began; the police interview does not include that detail.
The recording also included allegations that Sean "Diddy" Combs offered a large sum to have Shakur killed, a claim for which no comment has been received from Combs’s representatives. The trial is set to continue on Friday, with prosecutors planning to present another recording from 2009.