A self-described gangster who prosecutors say masterminded the fatal shooting of Tupac Shakur in Las Vegas in 1996 has appeared in court charged with murder.
Duane "Keffe D" Davis, 60, was scheduled to be arraigned on the charge on Wednesday in the US but the hearing was cut short after he asked District Judge Tierra Jones to postpone the hearing while he retains counsel in Las Vegas. Judge Jones rescheduled the arraignment for 19 October.
Davis has long been known to investigators and previously admitted that he was in the Cadillac where the gunfire erupted during the September 1996 drive-by shooting.
Under Nevada law, anyone who aids or abets a murder can be charged with the killing, in the same way that a getaway driver can be charged with bank robbery even if he never entered the bank.
Shakur, the best-selling hip-hop artist behind hits such as California Love, Changes, and Dear Mama, was already a huge star in the world of rap when he was gunned down on 7 September 1996. He was just 25.
He was signed to Death Row Records, an outfit associated at the time with Los Angeles street gang Mob Piru, which had a long-standing beef with the South Side Compton Crips - an outfit in which Davis was a key figure.
Prosecutors said last week that what happened on the night of the killing had been largely understood for many years, but they had not had sufficient admissible evidence to advance the case.
That began to change when Davis, reportedly the only person in the car that night still alive, published an autobiography and spoke about the crime for a TV show.
Source: AFP
