This week, a downtown Los Angeles courtroom heard ugly details of an unpleasant episode from 2016 that put music mogul Sean "Diddy" Combs at the center of horrifying testimony. The tension was palpable in the courtroom as Israel Florez, then working as a hotel security guard and now an LAPD officer, described a night he says he will never forget, one that not only left an impression in his mind but also on the face of the singer Cassie Ventura.
Florez was employed at the InterContinental Hotel in Century City when he ran into Ventura after the alleged assault. What he found: A woman with a purple eye, huddled in a corner with her face covered, visually shaken and scared. Then there was Diddy, clad in a towel, his eyes fixed, what Florez called a "devilish stare," and... "He was just staring at me," Florez said steadily but seriously. "A blank look… like piercing look of the devil stares."
He says that what followed was an effort to keep him quiet: Diddy took out a fat bankroll and said to him: "Don't tell nobody." But Florez wasn't having it. "I don't need your money," he said he answered to the court.
It is a scene that calls up a clear picture not just of alleged violence but of power and fear and trying to make everything go away with hush money.
Florez also claimed he was prevented from checking on Ventura by one of Diddy's bodyguards, a detail that, if true, only adds another layer of questions about what the mogul had to hide that night. The drama peaked a day later when Diddy reportedly ripped the phone of another guard who came to his suite after becoming paranoid he was being recorded. Florez said he had to remove the device physically.
This account was prompted after CNN released a shocking hotel surveillance video, captured in March 2016, depicting Diddy angrily and aggressively confronting Cassie in the presence of a bodyguard, chasing the terrified woman and hurling her to the ground, then rounding back to do more damage as he kicks the helpless victim and drags her limp body around, adding another a final act of cruelty by appearing to throw an object at her in attack. They said the footage now front and center in Diddy's federal criminal trial was admitted into court despite their best efforts to suppress it.
Prosecutors said the stabbing was part of a larger pattern of abuse and control. Now, Cassie Ventura is likely to take the stand itself. The trial is set to be a defining moment for Diddy and larger discussions about abuse, power, and accountability in the music business.
The impression of glitz and glamour and Puffy's superstar name no longer evoke the chuckleheads in that courtroom. As the trial progresses, the world is watching not through the eyes of a celebrity but through the eyes of a woman who wanted justice and the voices of those who were there when it all went down.
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