LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — Despite the long-held belief that a deceased gang member named Orlando Anderson was the man who shot rapper Tupac Shakur in 1996, leading to his death, information from a Clark County grand jury transcript says otherwise.
According to documents obtained by Channel 13, a man affiliated with the South Side Compton Crips, Denvonta Lee, says it was another South Side Crip, Deandre "Big Dre" Smith, who pulled the trigger.
Anderson and Smith were in a white Cadillac with Terrence Brown and Duane Keith "Keefe D" Davis the night of the shooting, Sept. 7, 1996. It's not refuted that the white Cadillac pulled up to a BMW driven by Suge Knight, with Shakur in the passenger's seat, but conventional wisdom has long been that Anderson shot into the BMW.
In his statements to a grand jury over the indictment of Davis in the murder plot, Lee says it was Smith who fired the shots.
When before the grand jury, Lee was asked if it was true that Smith told him that Davis "passed" a gun to Anderson.
"That's exactly what he told me," Lee said, according to the transcript.
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As the Cadillac approached the BMW, however, Lee indicated that Anderson "didn't have a clear shot" at Shakur, so Smith offered to take the gun.
"Dre said, 'he's on my side," basically I'll do it," Lee said. "Dre said, 'give me the pistol.'"
Lee indicated that the shooting was in retaliation for a fight that happened earlier at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas. In that altercation, members of Tupac's crew and security team punched and kicked Anderson in the lobby of the hotel.
"Little did any know that it is this incident that would ultimately lead to the retaliation shooting and death of Tupac Shakur," said Metro homicide investigator Jason Johansson during a news conference last month.
Back then, according to the transcript, members of the Mob Piru street gang, which was affiliated with the Bloods, worked security for Death Row Records. The gang didn't get along with its Southern California rivals, the South Side Crips.
According to investigators, it was Davis who orchestrated the plan to go after Shakur following the Anderson fight.
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Davis, who was arrested late last month, is scheduled to be arraigned in a Clark County courtroom on Wednesday. He has been charged with open murder over the Shakur murder.
