Hotel surveillance footage published by CNN on Friday confirmed Sean Combs bodily assaulting and kicking Casandra Ventura, his former girlfriend, in a way in step with allegations she made towards him in a lawsuit that she filed and settled final 12 months.
The video exhibits Mr. Combs, a hip-hop mogul often called Puff Daddy and Diddy, sporting a towel and confronting Ms. Ventura whereas she waits for an elevator. It exhibits him grabbing her and throwing her to the bottom, kicking her twice, grabbing a few of her possessions, and starting to pull her down the hallway by her sweatshirt.
Mr. Combs can also be seen grabbing an object off a desk and throwing it.
A lawyer representing Ms. Ventura, Douglas H. Wigdor, confirmed that the lady being assaulted within the video is his consumer.
“The gut-wrenching video has solely additional confirmed the disturbing and predatory conduct of Mr. Combs,” he stated in a press release. “Words can not specific the braveness and fortitude that Ms. Ventura has proven in coming ahead to deliver this to gentle.”
A consultant for Mr. Combs, who has not been criminally charged, didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
In Ms. Ventura’s lawsuit, she described an incident from 2016 at an InterContinental Hotel in Los Angeles through which Mr. Combs grew to become “extraordinarily intoxicated and punched Ms. Ventura within the face, giving her a black eye.” The lawsuit stated that after Mr. Combs fell asleep, Ms. Ventura tried to depart the resort room, however Mr. Combs awoke and adopted her into the hallway.
“He grabbed at her, after which took glass vases within the hallway and threw them at her, inflicting glass to crash round them as she ran to the elevator to flee,” the lawsuit stated.
Mr. Wigdor confirmed that the video footage corresponds to these allegations.
Mr. Combs settled the suit with Ms. Ventura — an R&B singer often called Cassie, who had been signed to Mr. Combs’s report label — in sooner or later in November, and denied any wrongdoing. Three fits by different girls, every alleging rape, adopted in fast succession, and in February a male music producer filed swimsuit accusing Mr. Combs of unwanted sexual contact.
Mr. Combs is dealing with a federal investigation, which officers stated was at the least partly a human trafficking inquiry. In March, federal brokers raided his houses in Los Angeles and Miami Beach, Fla., and stopped him at a Miami-area airport, confiscating his digital gadgets.
Mr. Combs has vehemently denied the accusations within the civil fits, calling them “sickening allegations” from folks on the lookout for “a fast payday.” His attorneys have sharply criticized how the raids — which concerned brokers from Homeland Security Investigations brandishing weapons — had been carried out, calling them a “gross overuse of military-level drive.”
Content Source: www.nytimes.com