A witness at the trial over Tupac Shakur's murder refused to identify the men responsible for the rapper's death. James "Mob James" McDonald gave evidence on the second day of the case, NME reported on August 19, 2026.
Duane "Keffe D" Davis, a former gang leader, is charged with murdering Shakur in September 1996. He has denied the accusation and pleaded not guilty. The court heard opening statements and testimony on Monday, August 17, three decades after the shooting.
McDonald objected to being made to take the stand at all and, as BBC News reported, said he had been threatened with contempt of court if he did not testify. Asked repeatedly whether he could identify the people involved, he pointed at Davis and said: "You're asking me something that wouldn't be good for him." Of Davis he said, "I don't want to send him to prison."
The two men come from opposite sides of an old feud. Davis led the South Side Compton Crips; McDonald was in the rival Mob Piru, part of the Bloods alliance, and worked for Suge Knight's Death Row Records, the label Shakur recorded for. It is a hip-hop case being tried thirty years after the fact.
McDonald said he did not see the shooting, but that those in Shakur's entourage that night quickly worked out who was behind it. Pressed by Davis's defence attorney Michael Sanft, he raised his voice and said the questions could hurt the defendant, and he described the period as a gang war in which Davis's nephew Orlando Anderson and others were being hunted. Prosecutors say Davis planned the killing after Anderson fought with Shakur hours earlier.
Reggie Wright Jr, who worked in Shakur's security and became Death Row's general manager in 1997, also testified. Before the trial Davis had said the evidence pointed instead at Wright, a former Compton police officer who has denied any part in the killing.
Shakur was shot in Las Vegas on September 7, 1996, when a car pulled alongside his as he travelled from a Mike Tyson boxing match, and he died of his injuries six days later. Davis wrote in a 2019 memoir that he was a passenger in that car and had handed the gun to Anderson; his legal team has called those claims fiction and the police work of the past three decades biased, sloppy and incomplete, while Davis says parts of the book were made up to sell copies. The trial is set to run for several more weeks.
The facts
- Duane Davis is charged with the murder of Tupac Shakur in September 1996.
- He has denied the accusation and pleaded not guilty.
- Opening statements were heard on Monday, August 17, 2026.
- James McDonald refused to identify those involved in the killing.
- McDonald said he was threatened with contempt if he did not testify.
- He was a member of Mob Piru and worked for Death Row Records.
- Reggie Wright Jr also gave evidence at the trial.
- Shakur was shot in Las Vegas on September 7, 1996 and died six days later.
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