A notorious former gang member brushed off questions about Tupac Shakur’s killing in court Tuesday, at one point challenging attorneys to “treat me as a hostile witness” during tense testimony.
“Mob James” McDonald — a former member of Compton’s Mob Piru gang who also worked as private security muscle for Death Row Records — pushed back as lawyers for both sides questioned him about the gang feud tied to the rapper’s 1996 murder on the Las Vegas Strip.
“I’m aware of a lot of things. Things that was going on. People ain’t talked about it in 30 years. Today ain’t one of them,” McDonald said, as prosecutors sought to connect Duane “Keffe D” Davis, now 63, to the alleged murder plot. Davis was affiliated with the rival South Side Compton Crips gang.
McDonald had been a lieutenant for Suge Knight, the Death Row Records boss and fellow Mob Piru member who was with Shakur on the night of the shooting.
Asked to revisit the decades-old conflict, McDonald resisted. “Me or anybody else raising up the dead is wrong,” he told the court.
“I don’t want to send [Davis] to prison. Even though we don’t like each other,” McDonald said, criticizing the court for making him relive a past he said he has tried to leave behind — and shield his grandchildren from.
His testimony appeared to offer little support for prosecutors trying to prove that his former rival orchestrated Shakur’s murder.
Prosecutors allege Davis handed a gun to his nephew, Orlando Anderson, and instructed him to shoot Shakur as an “act of revenge” after the rapper and his associates attacked Anderson.
It took more than 25 years to arrest and charge Davis, who has acknowledged that his nephew — now dead — was the one who fired the shots, but has denied giving the order.
McDonald had been managing security at Suge Knight’s Las Vegas club, where Knight and Shakur were headed during the ambush.
He said he knew who was and wasn’t present during the attack, but he wouldn’t name names — nor answer questions about the skirmishes that erupted in Compton after the murder.
“You’re asking me something that’s gonna hurt this dude!” McDonald said to Davis’ attorney Michael Sanft.
The testimony ended in a shouting match with McDonald throwing up his hands and saying “I’m not answering nothing. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Then, turning to Davis, he said: “Cover your lawyer, man. That dude is trippin.’”
“I’m not gonna send him to prison. You are,” he said of his old enemy.
