The murder trial of Duane “Keffe D” Davis has brought renewed attention to the final words of hip hop icon Tupac Shakur.
On August 17, retired officer Garry Dale from the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department testified, sharing details of the rapper’s last moments after the infamous 1996 drive-by shooting on the Las Vegas Strip. Marion “Suge” Knight, who was driving, also sustained injuries but survived, adding to the gravity of the event.
Dale recounted pulling over their vehicle just minutes before the shots were fired due to an obscured rear license plate, based on his testimony shared by USA Today. After issuing a warning, he allowed them to continue.
Soon after, the 25-year-old Tupac found himself in an ambulance, critically wounded, with Officer Dale accompanying him in what would become the rapper’s final journey.
“I was attempting to communicate with him to ascertain what had transpired and identify the shooters,” Dale stated according to the report. “Despite his condition, he was responsive, and I urged him to reveal the names of those responsible for the attack.”
Shakur didn’t give any details and instead repeated “we’ll take care of it,” according to the testimony.
Dale added, “I couldn’t get him to talk to me any further than that.”
After arriving at the hospital, Shakur—who was signed to Knight’s Death Row Records, which, at the time was associated with the Bloods gang—was heavily sedated, placed on life support machines and put into a medically-induced coma before he died six days later, according to Fox 5.
Duane “Keffe D” Davis Admitted to Providing the Gun in Tupac Shakur Murder in 2008 Police Interview
Davis—who was the leader of the rivaling South Side Crips—is on trial for murder. Prosecutors say he ordered the shooting after Shakur and Knight beat up his nephew Orlando Anderson earlier that night.
On Aug. 20, jurors heard Davis, who has pled not guilty, describe the killing in a 2008 interview with Los Angeles detectives. He described handing the weapon to Anderson, who allegedly fired the fatal shots from the car’s backseat, after spotting Knight and Shakur driving on the strip.
“If we would have been on my side,” Davis said in the recording, per NPR, “I would have blasted.”
Davis told detectives in the recording he had been out looking for Shakur and Knight with Anderson, Deandre “Big Dre” Smith and Terrence Brown, who was driving the vehicle, when he overhead fans shouting Shakur’s name, CNN reported. The car did a U-turn and pulled up alongside Knight’s car. Davis said in the recording that he passed the weapon to Smith in the backseat, who then handed it to Anderson.
He explained in the audio, according to KPIC, “He leaned over on the window, he rolled down the window, pop.”
Davis described his alleged role in the killing, per CNN, as part of a proffer agreement on drug charges against him and was told at the time that nothing he said in the interview could be used against him.
However, when he later wrote about the shooting in his 2019 memoir Compton Street Legend, prosecutors said it negated the deal he had with authorities and the judge ruled the recording would be admissible, according to CNN.
In his opening statements, Davis’ defense attorney called his accounts of the shooting in both the police interview and memoir “bulls–t.”
Tupac Shakur’s Autopsy Results Revealed
Jurors also heard from Clark County Medical Examiner Dr. Lisa Gavin, who testified Aug. 18 that Shakur was killed by a bullet that entered his right armpit. The bullet went through his lung and lodged into his chest, causing his lung to collapse, according to USA Today.
The “California Love” singer was also struck in the right thigh by a bullet that traveled into his stomach, causing damage to his intestines.
If convicted, Davis could be facing life in prison.
Anderson was killed in a gang shootout in 1998, The Los Angeles Times reported.