The stepbrother of rapper Tupac Shakur has hired a former attorney for such luminaries as Alec Baldwin, Elon Musk, Jay-Z, Eric Adams and Bobby Shmurda in his wrongful death lawsuit against the man charged in 2023 with killing the rappe.
Maurice Shakur, whose stage name is Mopreme, filed the complaint in Los Angeles County Superior Court on Tuesday, seeking unspecified damages against Duane Keith Davis, who is also known as Keefe D.
On Thursday, Maurice Shakur’s primary attorney, Marie Hayrapetian, filed a sworn declaration with Judge Barbara A. Meiers on behalf of lawyer Alex Spiro’s bid to join the case. Like Hayrapetian, Spiro is a member of the law firm of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP, but he works in the New York office and needs a judge’s approval to be involved in a California case.
According to Maurice Shakur’s suit, for nearly three decades, no individuals had been held civilly or criminally accountable for a “brutal murder whose effects remain palpable to this day.”
Witnesses were unwilling to cooperate with the police, investigations ran dry and even a multi-agency task force, commissioned several years later to investigate the murders of both Tupac and rapper Notorious B.I.G., made no arrests, the suit further states.
“This action seeks to change that and to recover damages for the wrongful death of Tupac on behalf of the estate of Mutulu Shakur, Tupac’s late stepfather and parent,” the suit states.
The suit features two color photos of Tupac and Mutulu Shakur, including one taken when the rapper was a child. A representative for Davis could not be reached.
Davis was a senior member and shot caller of a Compton street gang and on Sept. 7, 1996, he was in the white Cadillac alongside the gunman who shot Shakur, according to the suit, which further states that in September 2023, a Clark County, Nevada, grand jury indicted Davis for first-degree murder. Keefe D is the only individual who has been criminally charged.
His trial is tentatively scheduled to begin Aug. 10.
Shakur died on Sept. 13, 1996 at age 25, six days after he was shot. He had attended a boxing event involving Mike Tyson and Bruce Seldon the night of the shooting.