‘Take it to your room': Security guard tells Diddy trial of finding Cassie in hotel

Sydney Morning Herald

13-05-2025

WARNING: This article contains graphic detail that may distress some readers.
New York: A former security guard has told a court Sean 'Diddy' Combs offered him a 'stack' of cash following a violent altercation between the rapper and his then-girlfriend in the aftermath of a 'freak-off' sexual encounter in a Los Angeles hotel.
The assault, in which Combs hits, kicks and begins to drag Cassandra Ventura, the R&B singer known as Cassie, down a hotel hallway, was caught on surveillance footage and was published by CNN last year. It was also shown to the jury in Combs' racketeering and sex-trafficking trial, which began in New York on Monday (Tuesday AEST).
Israel Florez, now a Los Angeles police officer, was stationed at the Intercontinental Hotel in Century City, near Beverly Hills, on the morning of March 5, 2016, when the incident took place. He told the court he went to the sixth floor after being alerted to a 'woman in distress'.
When he got there, he found Ventura 'bundled up in the corner' of the hallway with a hoodie on, looking 'scared' and with a 'purple eye'. In the lobby, a vase had been destroyed. Combs, Florez said, was wearing a towel and coloured socks, and sat slouched in a chair with a 'blank stare' or a 'devilish stare'.
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Florez said he told Combs and Ventura that if they were going to argue they would have to take it back to their room. He said Cassie wanted to leave but Combs told her not to. When they went to the room, Florez said he stood in the doorway and watched her gather her belongings, while Combs reappeared with a 'stack' of cash, which he understood to be a bribe.
'I don't want your money,' Florez recalled telling the music producer. He says he then went downstairs to find Cassie outside the hotel at the valet, where he suggested she might wish to call the police. But she got into a black SUV and left the premises.
The prosecution alleges Combs and his team paid another security guard $US100,000 to make the video footage disappear, although it did not. This was part of a wider conspiracy to use the rapper's music business to support and advance his abusive sexual predilections, prosecutors say, and cover up his behaviour.