A process server working on behalf of a stepbrother of rapper Tupac Shakur says in new court papers that in September he served a wrongful death lawsuit at the jail where the man convicted of orchestrating the rapper’s 1996 death is being held.
Maurice Shakur, whose stage name is Mopreme, filed the complaint in Los Angeles County Superior Court on April 28, seeking unspecified damages against Duane Keith Davis, who is also known as Keefe D. On Friday, Shakur’s attorneys filed court papers with Judge Barbara A. Meiers stating that process server Bert Lott brought the lawsuit and summons in an envelope to the Clark County Detention Center in Las Vegas on Sept. 25.
Tupac Shakur died on Sept. 13, 1996 at age 25, six days after he was shot in Las Vegas. He had attended a boxing event involving Mike Tyson and Bruce Seldon the night of the shooting. Davis was convicted of murder in September and was sentenced on Oct. 13 to 40 years in prison.
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 his stepfather Mutulu Shakur, including one taken when the rapper was a child.
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. Keefe D is the only individual who has been criminally charged.
A case management conference in the civil case is scheduled Oct. 29.