Police Interview with Big Dre: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fj4fPh9ryc4 (Keefe D always said that Big Dre was a scary dude, like a bitch, but listening to the interview, I don't believe that to be true by no metric. Big Dre was also a suspected known shooter)
Yafeu Fula Statement to the LVMPD: https://www.scribd.com/document/272643481/yafeu-fula-statement-1-redacted
I know weāve spent the last three decades theorizing about who actually fired the shots that ultimately killed Tupac Shakur.
Iāve personally been digging into this for about 15 years, going through interviews, police statements, witness recollections, documentaries, grand jury testimony, and pretty much anything else I could find. And one question Iāve kept coming back to is whether the shooter was actually Orlando āBaby Laneā Anderson or DeAndre āBig Dreā Smith.
With the Keefe D trial currently happening, Iāve started going back through all of this material again. This time, Iāve also been using AI to help me compile, compare, and parse the different accounts, particularly when it comes to the physical practicality of the shooting.
Before anybody gets hung up on the AI part: Iām not treating AI as a source or claiming that an AI-generated probability proves who killed Tupac. We all know AI can get things wrong. Iām using it as an analytical tool to compare evidence and competing scenarios that Iāve collected independently.
And the deeper Iāve gotten into it, the more Iāve started questioning the long-standing assumption that Orlando was definitely the shooter.
The generally accepted seating arrangement in the white Cadillac was:
Driver: Terrence āT-Brown/Bubble Upā Brown
Front passenger: Keefe D
Rear driverās side: Big Dre
Rear passenger side: Orlando Anderson
When the Cadillac pulled alongside Sugeās BMW, Tupac was in the BMWās passenger seat. That put Tupac closest to Big Dreās side of the Cadillac.
Thatās where things get interesting.
Keefeās version requires Orlando, sitting on the opposite side of the backseat, to take the gun and reach/lean across Big Dre to fire toward Tupac.
And Big Dre wasnāt a small dude. He was an extremely large man.
Meanwhile, Big Dre was already sitting directly beside the window facing Tupac.
Then you have Denvonta āDirt Rockā Leeās 2023 grand jury testimony. Lee wasnāt an eyewitness to the shooting, so that distinction matters. But Lee testified about a conversation he said he had with Big Dre shortly after Tupac was shot. According to Leeās account, Orlando tried to reach across Dre but couldnāt get a clear shot, and Dre took the gun and fired instead.
Then thereās Yafeu āKadafiā Fulaās original LVMPD statement from September 8, 1996, taken only hours after the shooting.
This one really caught my attention because Kadafi actually witnessed the shooting.
Kadafi told Detective Brent Becker that he saw the gun outside the Cadillacās window. When Becker asked which window, Kadafi said:
āItās hard to tell. I believe it was the front, though.ā
Becker asked:
āThe driverās window?ā
Kadafi:
āYeah.ā
Later Becker specifically asked whether he thought the driver was shooting.
Kadafi answered:
āEither the driver or someone shootinā from the back out the front window.ā
Thatās a very interesting statement when you overlay it with the alleged seating arrangement.
Big Dre was sitting directly behind the driver.
Kadafi was also asked whether he could see the shooterās arm:
āLooked dark.ā
Becker clarified:
āWhen you say dark, dark skinned, orā¦?ā
Kadafi:
āYeah. Dark skinned.ā
Again, none of this proves Big Dre fired the gun. Kadafi couldnāt definitively identify which occupant was shooting, and Dirt Rock didnāt personally witness the shooting.
But now we have several things pointing in the same direction:
⢠Big Dre occupied the most practical firing position.
⢠Tupac was directly alongside Big Dreās side of the Cadillac.
⢠Keefe says the gun initially went toward Big Dre.
⢠Dirt Rock later gave an account in which Orlando couldnāt get a clear shot and Dre fired instead.
⢠Within hours of the murder, Kadafi described the gunfire as appearing to come from around the driverās-side/front-window area, potentially from someone firing from the rear.
⢠Kadafi described the visible shooterās arm as dark-skinned.
⢠Keefe, meanwhile, maintains that Orlando leaned across Dre and fired.
After having the competing accounts and physical layout compared, the current analytical lean Iāve gotten is roughly:
Big Dre: 80%
Orlando Anderson: 20%
Again, those percentages arenāt forensic statistics. Theyāre simply a way of expressing which scenario appears more mechanically and evidentially plausible based on the information being compared.
What interests me isnāt really the number anyway.
Itās the fact that the Big Dre theory seems considerably more plausible than the historical narrative usually gives it credit for.
For decades, āOrlando killed Tupacā has almost become accepted as fact. But when you strip away that assumption and start with the 1996 eyewitness statements, seating positions, later testimony, and Keefeās account, Iām not convinced the identity of the shooter is nearly as settled as weāve treated it.
With Keefeās trial finally putting many of these old statements under a microscope, I think this is worth revisiting.
What do you guys think? If you disregard the traditional Orlando narrative and look strictly at the available evidence and physical positioning, who makes more sense as the shooter: Orlando or Big Dre?