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.
The testimony from Ms. Bongolan has been anticipated for months. There was a reference to the balcony incident in Ms. Ventura’s bombshell civil suit in November 2023, which led to the government’s investigation and Mr. Combs’s arrest.
Ms. Bongolan testified under an immunity order by the court, after telling the government that she intended to assert her Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate herself. The reason was not specified during her testimony.
In September 2016, Ms. Bongolan testified, she was staying at Ms. Ventura’s apartment in Los Angeles when Mr. Combs dangled her over the balcony and then “threw me onto the balcony furniture.” She said she was left with back and neck pain, as well as night terrors and paranoia. “I scream in my sleep at times,” she testified.
On another occasion when she was staying at Ms. Ventura’s apartment, she said, she was awakened by Mr. Combs banging at the door, before he entered and spoke in a tone she described as “upset.”
Mr. Combs threw a knife toward Ms. Ventura, she said, who was standing in a hallway. It missed her, and “she threw the knife back.” It missed again, and Mr. Combs “left swiftly.”
Madison Smyser, a prosecutor, asked Ms. Bongolan whether she called the police. She said no, because she was scared. “Why?” Ms. Smyser asked. After a long pause, Ms. Bongolan answered, “I was just scared of Puff,” using a nickname for Mr. Combs.
Last year, Ms. Bongolan filed a lawsuit against Mr. Combs over her accusation about being dangled over a balcony. In response to that suit, representatives for Mr. Combs said he denied her allegations, and said they would “ultimately be proven baseless.”
The 16th day of Mr. Combs’s trial, at U.S. District Court in Lower Manhattan, started with testimony from Frank Piazza, a forensic video analyst. He walked jurors through a series of videos drawn from hotel surveillance footage that captured Mr. Combs attacking Ms. Ventura at a Los Angeles hotel.
Selections from the videos — which show Mr. Combs throwing Ms. Ventura down, kicking her and dragging her down a hallway — were broadcast by CNN last year, months before Mr. Combs’s arrest in September, and they drew wide condemnation. After that footage was broadcast, Mr. Combs apologized on social media, saying “my behavior on that video is inexcusable.”
The footage has become a key part of the government’s case, which charges Mr. Combs with sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy, but Mr. Combs’s lawyers have also raised questions about how CNN’s video was edited, saying that some of the events were depicted out of sequence, and parts were sped up.
Mr. Piazza showed a “corrected” compilation of the videos that standardized the speed of the footage and put the events in order, matched to a time code that had been set by the hotel’s security system when it was recorded.
When asked by Ms. Smyser, the prosecutor, whether the video sources he used for his compilation were “reliable depictions” of what the hotel surveillance system captured, Mr. Piazza agreed, and said that they showed no signs of tampering.
Even though the footage has been shown in court numerous times since the start of the trial, it still has a visible effect on people in the courtroom. At the point when Mr. Combs drags Ms. Ventura, a female juror wiped her brow and nodded with her lips pursed; Mr. Combs, seated with his legal team, sighed when he is seen throwing Ms. Ventura to the ground.
During cross-examination, parts of the footage were shown yet again, with Teny Geragos, a defense lawyer, highlighting slight gaps in the video time codes. Mr. Piazza said those had likely been caused by data corruption in the hotel’s surveillance system or by moments when the cameras detected no motion.
In addition to analyzing the hotel footage, Mr. Piazza was hired by prosecutors to “enhance” 10 sexually explicit videos from a laptop that Ms. Ventura turned over to the government. Those videos — along with another on which Mr. Piazza said he enhanced the audio — were submitted as evidence under seal and may be shown to jurors later in the trial.
Anusha Bayya contributed reporting.
Ben Sisario, a reporter covering music and the music industry, has been writing for The Times for more than 20 years.
Julia Jacobs is an arts and culture reporter who often covers legal issues for The Times.
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