Almost 30 years ago, on the night of September 7, 1996, Suge Knight, who was 31 and the boss of Death Row Records, was driving a black BMW through Las Vegas, just off the Strip. Riding next to him was Tupac Shakur, only 25, already a huge star. That night Tupac wore a Versace shirt and gold chain. Earlier, he had gotten into a fight with a Crip gang member after a Mike Tyson boxing match but seemed unbothered.
Behind them, about ten cars full of Death Row people followed through traffic. When they stopped at a light at Flamingo and Koval, under the bright Vegas lights, a white Cadillac pulled up beside them.
According to court papers from July 2024, Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson, a member of the South Side Compton Crips, didn’t have the right angle to shoot. So he handed his gun to Deandre “Big Dre” Smith in the backseat. Smith fired 13 shots. Four of them hit Tupac in the chest, arm, and leg. Suge was only scraped by shrapnel. Tupac, who often wore a bulletproof vest, didn’t have it on that night.
Inside the BMW, Tupac’s unreleased song “Never Had a Friend Like Me” was playing. Suge, now 60 and serving 28 years in a California prison for a deadly hit-and-run, later said losing Tupac changed his life forever. Tupac was his favorite person, and when Tupac died, a part of him died too.
For nearly three decades, no one was punished for Tupac’s death. Even though the shooting happened at one of the busiest intersections in America, with many cameras around, nothing moved forward. Many think people were too scared or too powerful to let the case continue.
Then, in September 2023, police finally made an arrest. They charged Duane “Keefe D” Davis, a former Crips leader and the last living person from that Cadillac, with planning the murder. Prosecutors say he set everything up.
In July 2024, court papers showed that back in 2009, during a police interview, Davis admitted his own part in the shooting and also claimed that Sean “Diddy” Combs (then known as Puffy) told him to kill Tupac. Davis said Diddy was angry over Tupac’s insults.
