On the second day of testimony in the long‑awaited trial over Tupac Shakur’s murder, a member of the rapper’s entourage clashed with prosecutors, voicing frustration at being compelled to testify. James “Mob James” McDonald told the court he had been threatened with contempt if he refused to take the stand.
Duane “Keffe D” Davis, accused of orchestrating Shakur’s killing, faces a murder charge but has pleaded not guilty. McDonald was pressed repeatedly to identify those responsible for the 1996 shooting. Gesturing toward Davis, he responded: “You’re asking me something that wouldn’t be good for him. I’m not going to send him to prison; you are.”
The trial seeks to resolve one of America’s most infamous unsolved cases, three decades after Shakur was gunned down at age 25 in a drive‑by attack on a Las Vegas street following a Mike Tyson fight on September 7, 1996. Prosecutors allege Davis, a former leader of the South Side Compton Crips, plotted the shooting after his nephew, Orlando Anderson, was assaulted by Shakur earlier that evening. They argue Davis believed the attack on his nephew could not “go unanswered.”
The shooting came at a time when gangs had a hold over the ’90s hip-hop scene, street code forbade police cooperation and distrust of authorities was rampant in the wake of the high-profile police brutality case of Rodney King and the subsequent LA riots.
Shakur himself, in an ambulance after he was shot, refused to talk to a police officer about what happened, instead telling him, “we’ll take care of it”. He died in hospital six days later.
And now 30 years on, McDonald appeared conflicted over breaking that street code. The witness, who said he had little love for Davis, remained hesitant when he took the stand on Tuesday to recount what happened. McDonald – a former member of rival Blood street gang offshoot Mob Piru and enforcer at Suge Knight’s Death Row Records label, which represented Shakur – testified that he was not with Shakur when the shooting took place.
He was repeatedly questioned by Davis’s defence attorney Michael Sanft about whether he witnessed the attack and whether he knew who was there at the time.
Testifying under oath, James “Mob James” McDonald grew visibly agitated, raising his voice and arms as he insisted he did not want to answer questions that, in his words, “wouldn’t be good” for the defendant. At one point, he looked directly at Duane “Keffe D” Davis and said, “Talk to your lawyer, man, this dude is tripping.”
Despite acknowledging personal animosity, McDonald told Davis, who sat stone‑faced in a suit, “I don’t want to send you to prison, even though we don’t like each other. I don’t want to send you to prison.” He added to defence attorney Richard Schonfeld Sanft, “You’re asking me questions that can hurt him,” appearing flustered.
Pressed further, McDonald explained that although he had not witnessed the shooting himself, members of Shakur’s entourage who were present that night quickly relayed to him who they believed was responsible.
“It was a gang war. People were getting hurt. People were being sought,” he said. “Orlando (Anderson), him and certain other people were being sought because people wanted to kill them.” He said people wanted revenge against those responsible for Shakur’s death. “They were the main subjects of a gang war – they were in the middle,” McDonald said of Davis and his nephew, noting he, too, was part of this gang war.
When his testimony ended, McDonald addressed Davis: “What you are going through brother is what you going through. I don’t want to be a part of it.” Reggie Wright Jr – a member of Shakur’s security detail who in 1997 became general manager of Death Row Records – also provided testimony on Tuesday. Days before the trial, Davis said that the evidence instead points to Wright, a former Compton police officer.
His defence team asked Wright about his role protecting Suge Knight, who was in the vehicle with Shakur at the time of the shooting, and asked about how his role grew after Knight left Death Row records. “And then you became general manager,” Sanft said, noting that after Knight was out of the picture, Wright took over Death Row Records, which was valued at $3m.
The high-profile case is expected to continue on Wednesday. Shakur’s murder had largely gone cold until Davis himself made public statements about the case, co-authoring a memoir where he said he was a passenger in the vehicle that fired into Shakur’s car and had supplied the gun that was used to kill him. Davis has since distanced himself from the memoir, saying he didn’t write all of it and that parts were fictionalised to sell more copies.
Source: BBC
