The MGM Grand altercation that preceded Tupac's shooting — what police believed
The black BMW sedan turned onto the Las Vegas Strip, and Tupac Shakur was in the passenger seat.
Marion "Suge" Knight, the CEO of Death Row Records, was driving.
Hours earlier, the two men had been inside the MGM Grand hotel, involved in an altercation with another man.
That man was identified in news reports as Orlando Anderson, a member of the Southside Crips gang.
What exactly happened inside the MGM Grand is not described in the record.
The source does not say what Shakur said or did during the altercation — only that he was involved.
The identity of the man was reported in news, not confirmed by police.
A white Cadillac pulled alongside the BMW and opened fire.
Shakur was struck four times, including in the chest.
The weapon was a handgun, never recovered.
Knight was wounded in the shooting but survived.
Police believed the hotel altercation was connected to the attack.
That was their belief.
That was not what they proved.
The night was a hotel scuffle, a car ride, a gun.
How those moments connect is the question the record leaves open.
THE DRIVE-BY
The black BMW turned onto the Strip, and the white Cadillac pulled up alongside it.
The shots came fast, from a handgun that was never recovered.
Shakur was struck four times, including in the chest.
Knight was wounded in the shooting but survived.
The BMW swerved, and Shakur was taken to University Medical Center in Las Vegas.
He underwent surgery there. He was placed on life support.
He died on September 13, 1996, at the age of 25.
Six days passed between the gunfire and the death.
Six days of a hospital room, of machines, of a mother waiting.
The record does not state who fired the shots. The shooter is not identified in the source material.
What is known is the sequence: a hotel scuffle, a car ride, a gun.
What is known is the result: four bullets, one chest, one death.
The white Cadillac drove on. The handgun was never recovered.
The case would go cold for years, and the question of who pulled the trigger would remain open.
For now, there was only the aftermath — a body in a hospital, a family in grief, and a city that had seen it happen.
THE POLICE THEORY
Las Vegas Metropolitan Police investigated the shooting.
They faced significant challenges from the start. Witnesses were uncooperative. The drive-by nature of the attack left little physical evidence.
Police identified Orlando Anderson as a suspect. Reports placed him in the earlier altercation with Shakur and Knight at the MGM Grand. The police theory was that the MGM Grand altercation was connected to the attack.
Anderson was interviewed. He denied involvement. He was never arrested.
The case went cold for years.
Anderson died in 1998 in an unrelated shooting. He was never charged in Shakur's death. The record does not establish that Anderson was the shooter; he was a person of interest, questioned, and never charged.
Police believed a connection between the casino floor and the Las Vegas Strip. They could not prove it. That would require evidence — a recovered weapon, a cooperating witness, an admission.
None came.
The handgun was never recovered. The white Cadillac drove on. Anderson's denial stood.
For nearly three decades, the theory sat without an arrest to attach to it. No one was charged based on that theory. The frustration is in the gap: what police believed versus what they could show.
The case remained open. The question of who pulled the trigger remained open with it.
Anderson was gone. The theory remained.
THE MAN WHO SAID HE WAS THERE
In 2018, Duane Keith Davis, known as “Keffe D,” sat for a televised interview and said he had been in the white Cadillac that night.
He named his nephew, Orlando Anderson, as the shooter.
Davis later wrote a memoir repeating the account.
Those were his words, given freely, on camera and in print.
What the record establishes is that Davis said these things.
What the record does not establish is that they happened.
The white Cadillac, the shooter’s identity, Davis’s place in the car — none of that is confirmed fact.
It is a story a man told about himself.
Prosecutors listened.
In 2023, Las Vegas police served a search warrant and arrested Davis.
He was charged with murder with use of a deadly weapon.
He was the only person ever charged in Tupac Shakur’s death.
Prosecutors said Davis’s own statements and admissions were central to the charge.
Davis pleaded not guilty.
His attorney argued that the public statements were protected by the First Amendment and that the case rested on unreliable testimony.
A Nevada judge denied the motion to dismiss.
The case did not go to trial.
Davis remained in custody.
A man’s self-incriminating account became the center of a case that had sat cold for 27 years.
It is a weight the record still carries.
It is not a weight the record has proven.
AND THE STORY STILL ISN'T OVER
Afeni Shakur died in 2016.
She had spent her later years preserving her son's artistic legacy and speaking about the unresolved case.
She was a former Black Panther activist.
She was his mother.
She did not live to see the 2023 charge against Duane Keith Davis.
Davis, in his early 60s at the time of his arrest, remained in custody at the Clark County Detention Center without bail.
He was the only person ever charged in the case.
No further arrests have been made.
Marion "Suge" Knight was serving a 28-year prison sentence in California on an unrelated voluntary manslaughter conviction.
He survived the shooting.
Orlando Anderson died in 1998 in an unrelated shooting.
He was never charged.
The murder remained officially unsolved for 27 years until the 2023 charge.
Davis pleaded not guilty.
His attorney argued that Davis's prior public statements were protected by the First Amendment and that the case was based on unreliable testimony.
A Nevada judge denied a motion to dismiss the charge.
As of late 2024, no trial date had been set.
The trial was repeatedly delayed.
The case had not gone to trial as of the most recent reports.
The record does not state when a trial will occur.
A mother is gone.
A suspect is in custody.
A trial has not started.
The case still is not closed.
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