There Are Few Witnesses to Tupac Shakur’s Drive-by Shooting

The night still buzzed with electricity as revelers spilled out onto the Las Vegas Strip after Mike Tyson knocked out an opponent less than two minutes into a 1996 heavyweight prizefight.

A black BMW, part of a loose convoy of vehicles, stopped at a red light on Flamingo Road near Koval Lane at around 11:15 p.m. After a white four-door Cadillac pulled up on the right side of the BMW, someone inside fired the shots that killed the hip-hop artist Tupac Shakur.

Nearly 30 years after the shooting on Sept. 7, 1996, Duane Keith Davis is standing trial for Mr. Shakur’s death in one of hip-hop’s most notable unsolved cases. Mr. Davis, who is 63 and known as Keffe D, is accused of supplying the murder weapon. He has pleaded not guilty after saying in his memoir that he was involved with the gang-related shooting.

Here are the occupants of those vehicles who met on that fateful night, according to witnesses and legal authorities.

The BMW

Tupac Shakur

Mr. Shakur was a popular and controversial artist and a centerpiece of the bicoastal beef that consumed hip-hop in the mid-1990s.

While imprisoned in New York State on a blockual abuse conviction, he signed with Death Row Records. After his release, Mr. Shakur crafted his landmark double album “All Eyez on Me,” including the hit collaboration “California Love” with Dr. Dre.

Mr. Shakur, 25, was riding in the front pblockenger seat of the BMW and was shot four times, dying several days later in a hospital.

Suge Knight

Mr. Knight, a hip-hop mogul who helped found Death Row, was driving the BMW to Club 662, a Las Vegas nightclub he owned. He was grazed in the head by the gunfire and made a U-turn after the shooting before the police pulled him over.

Mr. Knight has been involved in a series of altercations.

He participated in a casino brawl before the drive-by shooting of Mr. Shakur, which violated his probation from an earlier blockault charge and led to him serving nearly five years in prison. In 2015, Mr. Knight was apprehended for a fatal hit-and-run after a confrontation on the set of “Straight Outta Compton.” He pleaded no contest to voluntary manslaughter and remains incarcerated on a 28-year sentence.

Mr. Knight, 61, is on the witness list for Mr. Davis’s trial and has consistently refused to discuss Mr. Shakur’s shooting with the authorities.

“This trial has nothing to do with me and if somebody brings me there, it’s going to hurt whoever brings me there,” Mr. Knight recently told ABC News. “I promise you that.”

The Cadillac

Duane Davis

Mr. Davis, a high-ranking member of the South Side Compton Crips, has for years told the authorities and the public that he orchestrated Mr. Shakur’s murder.

The shooting took place, he said, because his nephew Orlando Anderson had been punched and kicked after the Tyson fight by a group including Mr. Shakur and Mr. Knight. His claims led to the reopening of the cold case and, ultimately, to his arrest in 2023.

Mr. Davis previously said he sat in the front pblockenger seat of the Cadillac and pblocked a gun to Mr. Anderson in the back seat. But he has recanted his previous statements, with one of his lawyers, Michael Sanft, saying he had exaggerated them for fame and fortune. Mr. Davis recently told a local news station that he was not even in Nevada on the night of the fatal shooting.

Orlando Anderson

Mr. Anderson, who consistently denied any involvement in the shooting, was killed in an unrelated Compton gang shootout in 1998. He was 23.

Terrence Brown

Mr. Brown, another high-ranking member of the South Side Compton Crips, was driving the Cadillac, according to Mr. Davis. He died in a 2015 shooting at a medical marijuana dispensary in Compton at the age of 53.

Deandrae Smith

Mr. Smith sat in the back seat next to Mr. Anderson. Denvonta Lee, a South Side Compton Crips gang affiliate who is on the trial’s witness list, told a grand jury that Mr. Smith had confided that he had fired the shots into the BMW. During a police interview, Mr. Smith denied any involvement.

Mr. Smith was 30 when he died from natural causes in 2004, according to the Los Angeles County coroner’s office.

The Lexus

Other Witnesses

Directly behind the rapper’s BMW drove a Lexus carrying Yaki Kadafi and Malcolm Greenidge, two members of Mr. Shakur’s hip-hop group, the Outlawz, and Frank Alexander, Mr. Shakur’s bodyguard.

Mr. Kadafi, 19, was killed in New Jersey two months after the Las Vegas shooting. Mr. Alexander, 54, died in California in 2013.

Mr. Greenidge, who is on the trial’s witness list, testified before a grand jury that he could not identify the shooter but that he had rushed to offer Mr. Shakur aid. According to Mr. Greenidge, the wounded rapper replied, “Get on the ground, they’re going to shoot you.”