2Pac’s murder case has seen another major development as never-before-seen photos and video footage from the night the rap legend was fatally shot have been made public.
The evidence, which was obtained by 8 News Now, was presented to a Las Vegas grand jury in the lead-up to last week’s arrest of Duane “Keefe D” Davis.
The photos show new angles of the black BMW sedan that ‘Pac was riding in when he was targeted in the drive-by shooting. Suge Knight was also in the car and was injured in the head by a bullet fragment.
The vehicle’s exterior can be seen riddled with bullet holes, while the front passenger door and front windscreen were also pierced with bullets.
Four photos from 2Pac’s autopsy, including a closeup of a bullet wound, were also shown to the grand jury, who voted to indict Keefe D on a charge of murder with the use of a deadly weapon with a gang enhancement.
Additionally, an unearthed video shows 2Pac and Suge leaving the MGM Grand in Las Vegas after they got into a violent altercation with a group of Crips, among them the alleged shooter Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson.
There have been several updates on 2Pac’s murder case since Keefe D’s arrest on September 29, which marked the first time that charges have been made in the 27-year-old case.
Earlier this week, it was reported that a witness told the grand jury that it was Deandre “Big Dre” Smith, not Anderson, who shot the All Eyez On Me rapper. Both men are no longer alive.
Detectives believe that Smith was sat next to Anderson in the car from which the drive-by shooting was carried out, with Keefe D and another man named Terrence Brown sitting up front. Keefe himself has confessed that he passed the murder weapon to Anderson, who was his nephew.
“When [Davis] passed the firearm to Orlando, Orlando didn’t have a clear shot,” the witness said. “Big Dre is six-six. At this time he’s 370, 400 [pounds]. He’s big.
“And you’re not going to be able to lean over a big guy like that and get — I mean, my time of knowing things, doing — you’re not going to reach over like that because shells would have been popping all in Big Dre’s face and all kind of stuff. He can’t bend down or anything, he’s too big.”
Suge Knight echoed that claim while reacting to Keefe D’s arrest, telling TMZ over the phone from prison: “I never had anything bad to say about Orlando because […] he wasn’t the shooter [..] It wasn’t Anderson, so that’s all I got to say about that part.”
According to Greg Kading, a retired LAPD detective with intimate knowledge of the case, the notion that Deandre Smith — not Orlando Anderson — was the one who shot 2Pac is fundamentally “wrong.”
“This witness, who I know very well, […] believed it because Dre was bragging about it,” he told Rolling Stone. “Now, this is his opinion. He was not an eyewitness. He wasn’t there. He has no firsthand knowledge […] He’s wrong. And here’s why he is wrong: Because when Keefe D does his police interviews, that is when he is at the most risk of lying during those interviews, he only harms himself.
“When Keffe D sits down and he’s presented with these proffer sessions [in 2009], he says it was Orlando, and he says it multiple times: ‘I gave the gun to Orlando.’ Now, he could have easily lied and said it was Dre and avoided throwing his nephew under the bus. Throwing his nephew under the bus cost him a lot within the family.”
He continued: “So then when he goes out and starts publicly admitting to his role in this thing and he says, ‘I just gave it to the back seat. I don’t know who did the shooting. Somebody in the back — all he’s trying to do is avoid that already existing conflict from when he threw his nephew under the bus.
“Now he’s like, ‘Maybe it could have been Dre, it could have been Orlando.’ If both of those guys were dead at the time that you made your confession to law enforcement in 2009 and you’re going to provide false information, then you would say it was Dre, because you don’t have any loyalty to him like you would your nephew.”
“You also have to understand that within the environment of a gang, it’s Orlando Anderson’s job to pull the trigger, not only because already a well-known shooter and he’s got a reputation, it’s because he’s the one that got his ass kicked,” Kading added, referencing 2Pac and his entourage’s attack on Anderson.
“He’s a punk if he lets somebody else take the gun out of his hand and [retaliate] for his ass-kicking. Orlando Anderson is not going to let somebody step in front of him and do that.”