Cassie Ventura testified on Tuesday that she witnessed Sean “Diddy” Combs and his entourage prepare for an altercation with Marion “Suge” Knight in California.
Ventura, who dated Combs from 2007 to 2018, testified about Combs forcing her to have sex with other men while he watched. She also claimed that Combs left a “freak off” in Los Angeles to meet Knight at a diner, according to the Associated Press.
“I was crying. I was screaming, like ‘Please don’t do anything stupid,’” Ventura testified. “I was really nervous for them. I didn’t know what they were going to do.”
Ventura claimed she saw Combs and a bodyguard access a safe and retrieve a gun before getting into an SUV. She said she is unaware whether they encountered Knight that night.
Earlier on Tuesday, Ventura explained how Combs forced her to participate in group sexual encounters known as “freak offs.” Ventura said she was often sleep-deprived and dehydrated after these drug-fueled ordeals, which lasted as long as four days.
Ventura is one of three victims who will testify as witnesses for the prosecution, though she is the only one who took the stand without using a pseudonym. Her testimony will continue on Wednesday.
In the ’90s, Combs and Knight were embroiled in a rivalry fueled by the infamous East Coast/West Coast rivalry which led to the slayings of Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakur. Combs’ Bad Boy Records and Knight’s Death Row Records were at the center of this feud.
In 1996, Tupac was mortally wounded in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas, Nevada. Knight was reportedly driving the SUV with Tupac, a passenger, when the shooting occurred.
In September 2024, suspect Duane Davis was arrested for the deadly drive-by shooting. Davis was the uncle of Tupac’s suspected shooter Orlando Anderson, who died in an unrelated shooting two years after Shakur’s slaying. Davis said in a 2018 documentary “Unsolved: The Tupac and Biggie Murders” that he was in the car with the gunman.
Following his arrest, Davis implicated Combs in Tupac’s slaying, alleging there was a “conspiracy to commit the murder began in California between Defendant, Eric ‘Zip’ Martin, and Sean [‘Diddy’] Combs.” Davis claimed Combs paid Martin $1 million to have Tupac killed. At some point, Davis allegedly went undercover with Los Angeles police during a trip to New York to obtain evidence showing that Combs and Martin were involved in Tupac’s shooting death.
Knight is currently serving a 28-year sentence in California for a fatal hit-in-run that occurred during an altercation in 2018.
Combs was arrested on September 16, 2024, outside a Manhattan hotel on federal charges of racketeering, sex trafficking, and transportation to engage in prostitution. Combs has been denied bail three times, as Judge Andrew L. Carter determined there was a “serious risk” of witness tampering in this case.
Combs’ legal team sought home detention with GPS monitoring. In exchange, they offered to post $50 million bail and to use Combs’ home as collateral.
“The government has proven the defendant is a danger. The bail package is insufficient even on risk of flight,” Carter said while denying Combs’ bail.
Federal authorities raided Combs’ homes in Holmby Hills, California, and Miami in March 2024. Reports indicated that the raids were connected to an ongoing sex trafficking investigation that resulted in his arrest months later.
The reported raids also occurred four months after Ventura accused him of sex trafficking and abuse. In a multimillion-dollar lawsuit, she alleged that Combs drugged her and forced her to have sex with other men. The pair settled the lawsuit a day after its filing.
However, in May, the video surfaced showing Combs assaulting Ventura. After the video was released, Combs put out a video expressing remorse for his behavior.
Two more accusers came forward a week after Ventura’s lawsuit. One of the women claimed Combs drugged and raped her at Syracuse University in New York in 1991. Combs denied those allegations before a third accuser, Liza Gardner, levied similar allegations against him.
In that case, Gardner claimed Combs and singer-songwriter Aaron Hall drugged and raped her and a friend following an Uptown Records event in 1990. Gardner said she was 16 at the time of the incident. She also accused Combs of choking her a day after the assault.
Days after footage of the Ventura assault was publicized, two more women filed lawsuits against Combs. One of those women was April Lampros, a New York Fashion Institute of Technology student who reportedly met Combs in 1994. Lampros accused Combs of sexually assaulting her on four occasions between the mid-1990s and the early 2000s.
Lampros claimed Combs promised to mentor her and connect her with executives in the fashion industry. Instead, Combs allegedly forced her to drink before raping her in a hotel room. Lampros recalled another instance in which Combs forced her to perform oral sex in a parking garage while a parking attendant watched.
Combs has been accused of committing or facilitating sexual abuse in at least 30 other lawsuits — including one, filed in October, which alleges he and Jay-Z raped a 13-year-old girl in New York in 2000. The accuser in that case had her lawsuit dismissed in February.
Combs turned down a plea deal days before jury selection began. His trial is expected to last two months.
[Feature Photo: Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP]
