On the first day of the long-awaited murder trial of Duane “Keffe D” Davis, a retired Las Vegas Metropolitan Police officer took the stand and described what he heard from Tupac Shakur in the back of an ambulance nearly 30 years ago.
Garry Dale, a bicycle patrol officer on the Strip in 1996, told jurors he rode with the wounded rapper after the Sept. 7, 1996, drive-by shooting. Tupac was still conscious and talking. Dale said he repeatedly asked who had shot him, seeking a possible dying declaration. According to Dale’s recollection under oath, Tupac would not give a name. He responded with words to the effect of
“No, we’ll take care of it” or “No, no, we’ll take care of it”
And repeated a version of that sentiment a couple of times.
“I couldn’t get him to talk any further,”
Dale testified, according to multiple courtroom accounts.
Dale was also the officer who had stopped the black BMW carrying Tupac and Death Row Records CEO Marion “Suge” Knight roughly 10 minutes earlier. The car lacked a rear license plate. The interaction was described as congenial. Knight and Tupac said they had removed the plates because they were filming a music video. Dale said he remarked on Tupac’s large gold medallion something along the lines of
“Wow, man, that’s a huge piece of gold”
And released them with a verbal warning. No written citation was issued.
About 10 minutes later, Dale responded to the shots-fired call and found the same BMW in the median. Knight was outside, bleeding from a head wound that Dale described as looking like a chunk of shrapnel or metal fragment, and urging officers to focus on Tupac. Emergency crews were pulling the rapper from the passenger side. Dale climbed into the ambulance for the ride to University Medical Center.
Dale’s testimony sits alongside an earlier, separate recollection from retired Sgt. Chris Carroll, who has said he was the first officer at the shooting scene. In 2014 interviews, Carroll described asking Tupac who shot him while helping him at the car. According to Carroll, Tupac replied “Fuck you” before slipping out of consciousness. Carroll has said he directed another officer to ride in the ambulance and was later told Tupac said nothing more.
The two stories are certainly not the same. They could be speaking from different times during the chaos, from different perspectives, or after nearly three decades. Press coverage has not merged these stories into one version of the last words spoken to the police by Tupac.
The prosecution contends that Davis planned the murder as revenge after Tupac’s crew beat up Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson, Davis’ nephew, earlier that same night in the MGM Grand during the Mike Tyson-Bruce Seldon match. But they say nothing about Davis being the actual shooter himself. Davis maintains his innocence and the burden is clearly on the prosecutor’s case.
Tupac was shot a number of times on September 7, 1996, and he died six days later, on September 13, at the age of 25.
This testimony reinforces what has been true since the start of the original investigation lack of cooperation by people involved and adherence to street code in keeping silent. It provides a firsthand account of how Tupac reacted to the police immediately after the shooting. But this witness testimony does not provide information about who actually shot him or whether or not Davis was responsible.
