Prosecutors allege Davis ordered killing after nephew’s fight with Shakur

A member of Tupac Shakur’s entourage clashed repeatedly with the defense attorney on Tuesday during the second day of the Las Vegas murder trial of Duane “Keffe D” Davis, the man prosecutors accuse of orchestrating the rapper’s 1996 drive-by killing.

James “Mob James” McDonald, a former member of the Blood street gang offshoot Mob Piru and onetime enforcer at Suge Knight’s Death Row Records label, which represented Shakur, raised his voice and his arms on the stand as defense attorney Michael Sanft pressed him about what he knew of the shooting. McDonald said he had been threatened with being held in contempt of court if he did not testify.

Pointing toward Davis, who has pleaded not guilty and appeared stone-faced at the defense table for much of the day’s testimony, McDonald told him directly: “I don’t want to send you to prison.” He said he did not want to send Davis to prison even though the two “don’t like each other.”

When Sanft continued pressing, McDonald asked the court to treat him as a “hostile witness.” At one point he looked toward Davis and said, “talk to your lawyer man, this dude is tripping.” When his testimony ended, McDonald told Davis, “What you are going through brother is what you going through. I don’t want to be a part of it.”

Under oath, McDonald acknowledged that he was not present when the shooting took place. But he testified that those who were with Shakur that night within the rapper’s entourage had quickly communicated who was responsible.

“It was a gang war,” McDonald said. “People were getting hurt. People were being sought.” He described Orlando Anderson, Davis’s nephew, and “certain other people” as “the main subjects of a gang war” who had been targeted for Shakur’s killing. He told the court he, too, had been part of that gang war.

Prosecutors have alleged that Davis, a former leader of the South Side Compton Crips street gang, planned the drive-by shooting after Anderson was involved in a fight with Shakur in Las Vegas hours earlier. They argue Davis believed the attack on his nephew could not “go unanswered.”

The trial comes 30 years after Shakur’s death. Shakur was 25 years old when he was gunned down in a drive-by shooting on a Las Vegas street shortly after a Mike Tyson boxing match on 7 September 1996. He died in hospital six days later. In an ambulance after he was shot, Shakur refused to talk to a police officer about what had happened, telling him instead, “we’ll take care of it.”

Reggie Wright Jr., a member of Shakur’s security detail who in 1997 became general manager of Death Row Records, also testified Tuesday. Days before the trial, Davis had said publicly that the evidence instead pointed to Wright, a former Compton police officer. The defense used its questioning of Wright to explore his role protecting Suge Knight, who was in the vehicle with Shakur at the time of the shooting, and to note that after Knight left Death Row Records, Wright took over the label, which Sanft said was valued at $3 million.

The case had largely gone cold until Davis himself made public statements about it. He co-authored a memoir in which he said he was a passenger in the vehicle that fired into Shakur’s car and had supplied the gun used in the killing. He has since distanced himself from the book, saying he did not write all of it and that parts were fictionalized to sell more copies.

The trial is expected to continue Wednesday in Las Vegas.