LAS VEGAS (AP) — A Las Vegas police at home wanted this week in the 1996 drive-by shooting of Tupac Shakur is linked to a man long known to detectives investigating the case, whose nephew emerged as a suspect shortly after the rapper’s murder.
The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department confirmed serving a search warrant Monday in the nearby town of Henderson. But the department said it would not release any further details, including where officers were looking and whether they expected to make a first arrest in the rapper’s murder nearly 30 years ago.
Residents of the small neighborhood of Henderson – nestled in the foothills of the city about 20 miles southeast of the Las Vegas Strip – identified the property where they said they saw officers detain two people while investigators searched the home Monday night.
Country music star Jason Aldean has released a controversial music video for his latest single, “Try That In A Small Town.”
Mountain West Commissioner Gloria Nevarez announced that San Diego State will remain in the conference, at least for now.
The unsolved murder of rapper Tupac Shakur has taken a new turn. Nevada authorities confirmed on Tuesday that they served a search warrant this week in connection with the shooting death of the rap star.
Nevada authorities say they served a search warrant in connection with the long-unsolved murder of rapper Tupac Shakur in September 1996.
“There were cruisers and SWAT vehicles. They had lights illuminating the house,” said Don Sansouci, 61, who had just gone to bed with his wife when a whirlwind of blue and red police lights woke them up shortly after 9 p.m.
Public records, including voting records, link the property to the wife of Duane “Keffe D” Davis, the uncle of Orlando Anderson, one of Shakur’s known rivals whom authorities have long suspected in the death of the rapper.
Anderson denied any involvement in Shakur’s murder at the time and died two years later in an unrelated gang shooting.
On Monday evening, from the sidewalk in front of their house, Sansouci said he saw a man and a woman come out of the house surrounded by police officers, place their hands behind their heads and slowly back up towards the officers.
Sansouci said they did not know the people who lived in the house. He described the area as “a nice, quiet cul-de-sac area” but said most street people were left alone.
It was not immediately known whether Davis has an attorney who can comment on his behalf, and messages left for Davis and his wife, Paula Clemons, were not returned. Records show the two married in Clark County, Nevada, in 2005.
Research News breathed new life into the long unsolved murder of Shakur, which has been surrounded by conspiracy theories. There have never been any arrests, but the spotlight on the case has been going on for decades.
Shakur’s death came as his fourth solo album, “All Eyez on Me”, remained on the charts, selling some 5 million copies. Appointed six times for a Grammy Award, Shakur is widely regarded as one of the most influential and versatile rappers of all time.
On the night of September 7, 1996, Shakur was riding in a black BMW driven by Death Row Records founder Marion “Suge” Knight in a convoy of about 10 cars. They were waiting at a red light a block from the Las Vegas Strip when a white Cadillac pulled up next to them and gunfire rang out. Shakur was shot several times.
The shooting unfolded shortly after a fight at a casino earlier in the evening between Anderson, Shakur and their associates.
There were numerous witnesses, but the investigation quickly bogged down, in part because those witnesses refused to cooperate, Las Vegas police have said in the past.
That silence erupted, up to a point, in 2018 when Davis, saying he was ready to speak after being diagnosed with cancer, admitted to being in the front seat of the Cadillac. In a interview for a BET showhe implicated his nephew in the shooting, saying Anderson was one of two people in the back seat.
Davis said the shots were fired from the back of the car, although he refrained from naming which of the two pulled the trigger, saying he had to follow ‘street code’ .
It is unclear if Davis was living in the home searched by police this week and if he was present when officers descended on the property. Las Vegas court records show there has been an active warrant for his arrest since July 2022, when he failed to appear in court on a drug charge.
____
Associated Press writer Ken Ritter in Las Vegas and researcher Rhonda Shafner in New York contributed to this report.
