Man suspected of killing Tupac breaks silence for first time since being arrested

The man who was arrested in 2023 on suspicion of killing Tupac Shakur has spoken out for the first time since he was taken to jail.

Las Vegas police arrested Duane 'Keffe D' Davis outside his house on 29 September 2023 and he was indicted by a jury on a count of open murder.

Davis had previously been known to investigators, having said in 2018 after a cancer diagnosis that he was one of the people sitting in the car from which the shots that killed Shakur were fired from, while in his 2019 memoir Compton Street Legend he said he'd been in the car when shots were fired from it.

The rapper had been leaving a Mike Tyson boxing match held at the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas on 7 September, 1996 when a car pulled up alongside his vehicle and he was shot multiple times.

Shakur was rushed to hospital, six days later he was pronounced dead.

Prosecutors claim that Davis orchestrated Shakur's killing and alleged that he was the 'shot caller', but in an interview with ABC News from jail he insisted that he was actually 'innocent'.

Duane 'Keffe D' Davis previously claimed he was in the car the shots that killed Tupac Shakur were fired from (Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

In the interview he claimed that he only confessed to a part in the killing because he was paid to lie about it.

He said: "I'm innocent, I ain't killed nobody. Never did, ever killed nobody."

Davis also claimed that on the night of the murder he was actually hundreds of miles away at the time, saying that he was in Los Angeles at the time instead of being in Vegas.

He also claimed that his memoir contained false statements, saying he didn't write it and was given information by police, once again insisting upon his innocence and saying he 'shouldn't have said nothing'.

While the book is billed to readers as 'the last living eyewitness to Tupac's murder telling his story', Davis says he 'never read' Compton Street Legend and accused the co-writer of taking liberties.

In his first interview since his 2023 arrest he now claims he is innocent, and alleges that he was actually not even in Las Vegas at the time (Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

"I just gave him details of my life, and he went and did his little investigation and wrote the book on his own," Davis claimed as he insisted once more on his innocence.

"I did not do it.

"They don't have nothing. And they know they don't have nothing. They can't even place me out here. They don't have no gun, no car, no Keffe D, no nothing."

While he was supposed to go to trial this month, proceedings have been pushed back to 9 February 2026 after his defence asked for more time to interview witnesses they claim can prove that Davis was not at the shooting.