Tupac murder trial begins, as witnesses share how “All hell broke loose” on night of rapper’s shooting

The Tupac Shakur murder trial has started, and the court has heard about how “all hell broke loose” on the night of the rapper’s shooting.

READ MORE: Who killed Tupac? Everything we know about hip-hop’s greatest mystery At the trial, former gang leader Duane “Keffe D” Davis is charged with the murder of Shakur in September 1996.

The rapper was gunned down on September 7 that year, after a car drove alongside him and opened fire as he travelled from a Mike Tyson boxing match.

He died from his injuries six days later .

While he did not pull the trigger directly, Davis is accused of planning the murder, as a result of his nephew Orlando Anderson being involved in an altercation with Shakur just hours beforehand.

Davis has denied the accusations and entered a not guilty plea.

At the opening day of the murder trial, the prosecution alleged that Davis was the leader of the group responsible for the shooting, and highlighted how details of the night were shared in a memoir he co-wrote.

“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,” the jury was told by Chief Deputy District Attorney Binu Palal (as per BBC News ).

“Remarkably, you will learn that from Duane Davis himself.” "On September 7, 1996, Tupac Shakur came to Las Vegas to attend a Mike Tyson fight." Chief Deputy District Attorney Marc DiGiacomo is giving the prosecution opening statement in Duane "Keffe D" Davis' murder trial right now. https://t.co/BSlVjQwHsy pic.twitter.com/51gS35CNbd — Meghann Cuniff (@meghanncuniff) August 17, 2026 In his memoir, which was published in 2019, Davis claimed that he was a passenger in the car that opened fire on Tupac, and he also claimed that he gave the gun used in the murder to his nephew, Anderson, who shot the rapper.

Davis’ legal team called the claims “fiction” and said that the accusations against their client come as a result of a “biased, sloppy and incomplete” police investigation over the past three decades.

The defendant has also distanced himself from the aforementioned book, claiming that sections were fictionalised to make the memoir sell better.

In court, the prosecution brought out former member of Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, Garry Dale, who was on the force at the time of the killing.

In his witness statement, Dale recalled how he rode in an ambulance with Shakur after the shooting, and said that the rapper refused to share any details about the situation or the people involved.