Casandra Ventura, the singer and model known as Cassie, began her second day of testimony on Wednesday morning in the federal trial of Sean Combs, her former boyfriend and boss of the label, detailing the consequences of her attack on her in a hotel in Los Angeles in 2016.
As recorded in a surveillance video that has been shown several times already at the trial – and broadcast in CNN games last year – Mr. Combs struck, kicked and dragged into the corridor of a hotel. On Tuesday, Ms. Ventura testified that Mr. Combs had just struck her in their hotel room during a “oddity” – the sexual marathons choreographed and supplied by drugs which are at the heart of the government that Mr. Combs is sex -trafic.
Mr. Combs is accused of sexual traffic, racketeering and transportation to engage in prostitution. He pleaded not guilty of the accusations, and his lawyers argued that Ms. Ventura and other women who are part of the case were voluntary participants in “freak-offs” and other sexual meetings involving Mr. Combs.
Ms. Ventura testified that after leaving the hotel, she took a selfie in a Uber who showed that she had suffered a “big lip” in the altercation. She added that Mr. Combs had sent her a text on several occasions, pleading for her to answer.
“You call, I am surrounded,” he sent a text in a message entered into evidence.
He sent her a text several times to call him, saying: “The cops are there.” (There were previous testimonies from a hotel security guard that the police were not called after the altercation.)
“Are you going to abandon me alone?” He sent her a text. “Call me pls.”
She replied in an SMS that Mr. Combs was “sick” for thinking that what he had done to her was ok. “Please stay away from me,” she wrote.
Once Ms. Ventura arrived in her apartment, a friend who visited called the police on her behalf. When the police arrived, Ms. Ventura said, she answered some of their questions but did not mean who attacked her.
“Do you want to protect Sean?” Asked the prosecutor, Emily A. Johnson.
“Yeah, of course,” replied Ms. Ventura.
After the police ‘departure, she said, Mr. Combs arrived in the apartment and tried to enter. “Just the chaos in front of the door,” said Ventura about the scene. “Bringing down as a couple, kicking, shouting.”
Two days after the hotel assault in 2016, Ms. Ventura testified, she was to appear during her first first first film, for a film in which she played “The Perfect Match”. She said that she had returned to Mr. Combs to be adjusted for her outfit; The jury was shown a photo of the couple together during the first, Ms. Ventura carrying makeup that she said covered with bruises on her face.
Ms. Ventura’s testimony has been widely planned since Mr. Combs’ arrest in September 2024, if not before. She had continued it at the end of 2023 – in a case which was settled in a single day – on many of the same allegations contained in the indictment of the government, in which it was only identified as “victim -1”.
The government should continue its direct examination of Ms. Ventura throughout the day. If this is over on Wednesday, it would be followed by a cross-examination of Mr. Combs lawyers.
