Long-awaited trial begins in rapper Tupac Shakur’s 1996 Las Vegas killing

Shakur’s accused killer Duane ‘Keffe D’ Davis was out for revenge after his nephew was assaulted, jury hears. Davis has pleaded not guilty

Rapper Tupac Shakur was shot dead in an act of gang revenge ordered by a mobster who later boasted of it, jurors heard on Monday, as one of America’s most anticipated trials got under way, 30 years after the murder.

Duane “Keffe D” Davis, a one-time leader of the South Side Compton Crips, one of a patchwork of gangs that ran parts of Los Angeles in the 1990s, ordered the killing after his nephew had been beaten by a rival mob, prosecutor Binu Pilal told a Las Vegas court.

“On September 7, 1996, Tupac Shakur publicly, on camera, participated in a humiliating beating of Duane Davis’s nephew, Orlando Anderson,” he said.

“Then, two and a half hours later … Tupac is gunned down in a drive-by shooting from a white Cadillac in an act of revenge.”

Pilal said Davis did not pull the trigger but had handed the gun to someone sitting in the back seat of his car and ordered that person to shoot the rapper.

In repeated interviews – with police, with media and ultimately in an autobiography – Davis confessed to his part in the murder, Pilal said.