Compton

Nearly 30 years after Tupac Shakur was gunned down near the Las Vegas Strip in a killing that rocked the rap world, the trial of the man prosecutors allege did everything but pull the trigger got underway Monday with new revelations.

Nevada prosecutors allege Duane “Keffe D” Davis, a one-time Compton gang member, orchestrated Shakur’s killing as revenge for an attack on his nephew hours earlier and are using Davis’ own words in interviews and a book he co-authored as evidence.

In opening statements, prosecutors said an ugly gang rivalry on the streets of Compton led to the slaying of Shakur, a famed rapper and actor, who died six days after he was shot.

The Sept. 7, 1996, shooting, they said, was rooted in a war between Southside Crips-Burris Street, led by Davis, and Mob Piru, a gang long associated with Death Row Records. Shakur was closely affiliated with Death Row, and the record company’s boss, Marion “Suge” Knight, was inside his car the night he was attacked.

In court testimony Monday, it was revealed that Shakur was conscious after the shooting en route to the hospital but did not cooperate with authorities.

The first witness, Garry Dale, a Las Vegas Metro police officer, testified that he saw Shakur pulled out of the car with gunshot wounds and rode in the ambulance with him.

When he asked Shakur who shot him, the rapper replied, “‘No, we’ll take care of it,’” Dale said. “I couldn’t get him to talk any further.”

Duane “Keffe D” Davis is accused of murder in the 1996 killing of hip-hop icon Tupac Shakur.

(Steve Marcus / Associated Press)

The incident, according to Clark County Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Binu Palal, followed a violent confrontation at a Mike Tyson fight earlier that night in Las Vegas. Palal showed video of Shakur’s entourage attacking Davis’ nephew Orlando Anderson. Travon Lane, a Mob Piru member, had spotted Anderson in the MGM Grand hotel lobby. Months earlier, Anderson stole Lane’s Death Row Records chain in the Lakewood mall during an attack.

The rivalry between the groups grew after the Southside Crips became the West Coast security for Sean “Diddy” Combs’ record label, prosecutors said.

“Let’s be clear, Duane Davis did not pull the trigger. But he did plan the shooting in retaliation of the beating of his nephew,” Palal said. “Remarkably, you will learn that from Duane Davis himself.”

Palal noted that Shakur’s shooting was followed by numerous slayings in Compton, including that of an 11-year-old girl.

“In this world, silence means survival,” Palal said. “The one person who has had a hard time being silent is Duane Davis.”

The prosecutor played parts of an interview with a Los Angeles Police Department federal task force in 2008 in which Davis acknowledged his role in the rapper’s fatal shooting. They also cited other interviews as well as his own memoir.

The prosecutor said Davis got the gun from Eric Zip Martin, an East Coast drug dealer associated with Combs’ Bad Boy Entertainment.

“He admits putting the gun he obtained that night in the back seat of the vehicle so the shooters could shoot,” the prosecutor said. “You will learn that Duane Davis got the gun. … You will learn that he got into a white Cadillac. You will learn when the opportunity presented itself for retribution, Duane Davis made sure that the shooter was armed and ready to execute their revenge.”

Palal said Davis and his crew set out in search of Knight and Shakur. In multiple accounts, including in his book “Compton Street Legend,” Davis wrote that they spotted the Death Row caravan stopped at a red light, with Shakur waving to female fans while hanging out of the BMW window.

“Tupac, he gave himself away,” Davis said in the recording played in court. “Otherwise, they would’ve got away.”

Davis was arrested in 2023 and indicted for masterminding the killing and providing the gun.

Rapper Tupac Shakur is show at Club Amazon in New York on July 23, 1993.

(Al Pereira / Getty Images)

Michael Sanft, Davis’ defense attorney, told jurors there will be no evidence linking his client to the shooting.

“There are no facts to point to Keffe — not one,” he said. “You’re going to hear about this over and over again.”

Sanft recounted decades of probes and noted that prior investigations did not take his client’s statements seriously because they were not credible. “He treats that book like it’s fact,” Sanft said of a lead detective in the case. The defense attorney, in an unusual move, repeatedly undermined his own client’s credibility.

Sanft portrayed Las Vegas police as incompetent, with lost records, and the LAPD and then Compton police as corrupt.

“What facts do they have to put Keffe D in a car in 1996? When you look at the video in 1996, do you see Keffe D?” he added, referencing the lobby beating.

Sanft said Death Row’s security chief was Reggie Wright Jr., a felon and former Compton police officer whose father led the Compton police gang unit. He said the former officer was not with Knight and ordered his security team not to carry firearms. The defense lawyer cast Davis’ memoir as fiction and said there was no evidence his client was in Las Vegas.

The prosecutor, however, told jurors that Davis, from 1998 to 2023, made several incriminating statements and, in 1998, admitted to the FBI to being in Las Vegas at the time of Shakur’s slaying.

Davis, according to prosecutors, told investigators during a secret meeting he “was mad about Orlando Anderson’s beating” and he was the boss who got the firearm and was in the white Cadillac. When Greg Kading, an LAPD detective who led the task force, left policing and later published a book revealing Davis’ role, it made Davis want to go public, according to the prosecution.

“Greg Kading is profiting off Duane Davis’ life story,” Palal said. By the time the book was released, the others who were allegedly in the car the night of the shooting were dead. Anderson was killed and Smith passed away. In 2019, after a series of interviews, Davis published his own book, which, full of bravado, gave a similar account of Shakur’s killing as that of the federal task force. The prosecutor then played an interview from the time of the book’s release, in which Davis justified his actions.

Rap mogul Marion “Suge” Knight appears in court in 2018 in an unrelated case.

(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

Ingrid Stokes, one of four women in a car that had been following Shakur the night of the attack testified that she freaked out and screamed, then fled the scene, telling police she “didn’t see anything” because “snitches get stitches.”

A third witness who testified Monday, former Las Vegas Metro Det. Brent Becker, said he interviewed Knight about the beating in the MGM Grand lobby, and Knight said he basically “didn’t know anything.” By 1997, detectives suspected that Davis was in the Cadillac that opened fire on Shakur, he testified.

Davis, now 63, has pleaded not guilty to murder with a deadly weapon with the intent to promote, further or assist a criminal gang. In recent weeks, he’s denied being in the Cadillac or Las Vegas that night and, in interviews with Las Vegas TV stations, blamed a former head of Death Row Records security.

“I had nothing to do with nobody’s murder,” he told interviewers.

Prosecutors are expected to call witnesses to support Davis’ claims from over the years. Davis’ lawyers will seek to portray him as a fabricator — his bragging is all fiction. Davis has done the same with Las Vegas reporters.

“I did not write the book; a ghostwriter wrote that book,” Davis said in a recent jailhouse interview. “I was trying to make my family some money.”

When Compton Unified School Board President Micah Ali checked his mailbox last week, he was in for a shock.

The school district has been making headlines as a state and national leader in student performance gains, and it has been upgrading and replacing its aging campuses to help advance that growth. Next week’s ballot includes a $360-million bond measure called CPT, which would keep that momentum going and replace badly dated Dominguez High School.

So when Ali opened a slate mailer titled “Congresswoman Maxine Waters’ Sample Ballot and Voter Recommendations,” he couldn’t believe her advice on Measure CPT.

Vote “no.”

Given Waters’ stature as a congressional representative for 35 years, Ali said, her slate mailers can swing outcomes.

“Yes, it does carry weight,” Ali said, and the thumbs-down recommendation “can literally cripple our ability to pass this bond.”

Ali was doubly surprised because the mailers went out to voters just a few weeks after Waters attended an unveiling ceremony for the new Compton High School campus. Compton High alums and hip-hop heavyweights Kendrick Lamar and Dr. Dre joined the celebration, and the latter was honored for his $10-million donation to the new performing arts center.

Lunch tables and a temporary cafeteria are set up outdoors at Dominguez High School because of a fire three years ago.

(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)

A second district high school, Centennial, is being replaced with a modern campus, and district officials are hoping Measure CPT passes so Dominguez students aren’t left behind, but also because the district’s other schools would get multiple upgrades and repairs, from infrastructure to classrooms to athletic fields.

I met with Ali on Wednesday afternoon at Dominguez, along with Principal Caleb Oliver. The school turned 70 this year, and it shows. The grounds are scruffy, wiring and plumbing are outdated, the gymnasium air conditioning hasn’t worked in years. To walk the campus is to step back in time — to the Eisenhower administration.

While we were talking, Oliver called out to a senior named Angelina Ramirez, referring to her as a superstar student. I asked Angelina what kind of upgrades the campus could use.

Dominguez High School Principal Caleb Oliver.

(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)

“Well, I like to use the cafeteria as an example,” she said, pointing to where it used to be.

What happened to it?

“It burned down,” she said. An electrical problem was the suspected cause, her principal added.

That was more than three years ago, and since 2023, the cafeteria has been an outdoor plaza.

“I feel like that’s affected students a lot,” Angelina said.

The big question, of course, is why Waters’ campaign committee — Citizens for Waters — recommended a no vote.

I’d like to tell you why it is that a rapper has written a $10-million check in support of Compton’s students while a congresswoman has told them to go fly a kite. But I’ve asked by phone, text and email, and I still don’t have an answer.

After contacting Citizens for Waters, which referred me to the congresswoman, I called her office and emailed her press office, which sent me this response at 7:43 p.m. Thursday:

“Per US House Ethics rules, we are unable to respond to your request.”

I don’t know what rules those are, but the rulebook needs some rewriting if a congresswoman can’t answer a simple question about why her campaign mailer recommends a no vote on a school bond measure.

“We have no idea, and we’re baffled,” Ali said. “Who would oppose the construction of a new school in a community like Compton?”

In the working-class community, the student population is roughly 84% Latino and 14% Black.

I suggested that Ali consider having students march over to Waters’ district office and ask for an explanation.

“We’d rather have these children’s butts in seats and learning,” Ali said, adding that “we need … to continue driving up these test scores.”

Compton school board candidate Tana McCoy talks to school board President Micah Ali about the mailer.

(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)

It’s not as if there is no reasonable opposition to Measure CPT. These kinds of bonds cost taxpayers real money over the course of many years, and CPT would add about $60 per $100,000 of assessed property to annual tax bills.

That would hit working folks and retirees with an added tax burden of between a few hundred and several hundred dollars a year. And taxpayers have been paying off two previous school improvement bond issues, one passed in 2015 and one in 2022.

In addition to the financial burden, according to district parent Anthonia Limon, who wrote the statement against CPT for the L.A. County sample ballot, safety issues have undermined community trust in district leadership.

“Infrastructure alone does not create safe schools,” Limon wrote.

If Waters has similar concerns, that would be one thing. But to my knowledge, and to Ali’s, there has been no public explanation for recommending a no vote. And when you read the fine print on the slate mailer, which advises voters to “take Congresswoman Maxine Waters’ recommendations with you to vote,” it only raises more questions.

“This document was prepared by Citizens for Waters, not an official party organization. Appearance in this mailer does not necessarily imply endorsement of others appearing in this mailer nor does it imply endorsement of, or opposition to, any issues set forth in this mailer,” it says.

Huh?

Are they endorsements or aren’t they?

The Times reported in 2004 that the rep’s daughter, Karen Waters, “has charged candidates for spots on her mother’s ‘slate mailer,’ a sample ballot that many voters in South Los Angeles use to guide their choices.” Last year, the Waters campaign paid a $68,000 fine for campaign finance law violations following a Federal Election Commission investigation that involved Citizens for Waters.

Rep. Maxine Waters’ slate mailer.

(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)

Also in the fine print on the current mailer:

“Appearance is paid for and authorized by each candidate and ballot measure which is designated by” an asterisk.

So are these endorsements or paid advertisements? There’s an asterisk on nearly every endorsement in the mailer, from city council to governor to judgeships to Measure CPT. The way I read this is that various parties paid for endorsements, but the mailer does not reveal who paid, or how much they ponied up. Such mailers, by the way, are not uncommon in California, according to election law experts.

“I think this is misleading for voters,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley law school. Although he thinks the endorsements are a form of protected free speech, he said this “reflects a very deep problem in our elections with dark money, when we don’t know where the money is coming from.”

On Thursday, I visited Tana McCoy, a Compton High grad and retired city employee who is running for Compton Unified school board. She showed me the slate mailer delivered to her home, but said she’s going to vote yes on CPT despite Waters’ recommendation.

“Children need to feel good about their environment, because that’s all part of their mental health,” McCoy said.

At Dominguez, where graduates have a 96% college acceptance rate, according to district officials, junior Zaiden Ross gave me a tour that included a stop at a gymnasium fountain that he said hasn’t worked in years. Some fountains are dirty, he added, “and some of the pipes on campus produce water that has, like, extremely high amounts of lead and magnesium.”

Student Zaiden Ross demonstrates a nonworking sink in a bathroom on the campus of Dominguez High School in Compton.

(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)

Zaiden took me to a classroom to show me water samples he’s still testing. Then we visited the robotics classroom, where he turned on a faucet, and the flow was closer to the color of apple juice than water. The air conditioner was rattling, and teacher G.C. Esiobu, who runs the engineering and robotics club, said there had been an “emergency” fix for a busted system. Zaiden gave me a quick rundown of dated computers and other equipment students use to design drones and robots.

And yet despite all that, a display case was filled with trophies. At competitive meets, Esiobu said, “we have been winning with little or nothing.” With equipment upgrades, she added, “just imagine the level we will go.”

There’s still time, before Tuesday’s election, for Waters to visit Dominguez High and maybe get a tour from Zaiden and Esiobu.

If she does, she might rethink that endorsement.

steve.lopez@latimes.com