A woman testified on Wednesday in Sean Combs’s federal trial that he had held her over the balcony of a 17th-floor apartment and that she had once seen the music mogul burst into the home of Casandra Ventura, his former girlfriend, and throw a knife at her.
The woman, Bryana Bongolan, was a friend of Ms. Ventura — better known as the singer Cassie — and described a series of violent and threatening interactions with him.
Though Ms. Bongolan, a designer, had met and befriended Ms. Ventura around 2013 or 2014, when Ms. Ventura became associated with her fashion company, she said she hesitated to meet Mr. Combs. She had seen Ms. Ventura unsettled while on the phone with him, she said, and had seen Ms. Ventura with a black eye.
Once, near a photo shoot outside his home in the Los Angeles area, Ms. Bongolan said Mr. Combs accosted her. “He came up really close to my face,” she testified, “and said something along the lines of, like, ‘I’m the devil and I could kill you.’”
Mr. Combs is charged with sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy, and prosecutors say the famed music producer engaged an inner circle of bodyguards and high-ranking employees to help him commit a series of crimes over two decades.
Mr. Combs has pleaded not guilty to the charges. His lawyers have said that he and his employees were involved in legitimate business operations, not a criminal conspiracy, and that the sex at issue in the government’s case was entirely consensual.
