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When former security guard Israel Florez stepped off an elevator at the InterContinental Hotel on March 5, 2016, he encountered a shattered vase on the floor, a visibly injured woman and Sean Combs wearing only a towel and a “devilish stare” on his face, he told jurors Monday.
Called as the first witness in Combs’ racketeering and sex-trafficking trial in Manhattan, Florez testified that he responded to the incident after receiving a call of a “woman in distress” on the sixth floor. He said the woman looked frightened and had her hoodie pulled up over her head. Still, he could tell she had a “purple eye,” he testified.
Now a sworn officer with the LAPD, Florez said he escorted the woman, identified by prosecutors as Combs’ former partner Casandra “Cassie” Ventura, back to the hotel room where she had been staying with Combs. He said Combs demanded the woman stay, but Florez remained in the room’s threshold until Ventura gathered a bag and left. He said Ventura wasn’t answering his questions, telling him, “I just want to leave.”
According to Florez, Combs offered him a wad of cash to keep quiet about what he witnessed. “Don’t tell nobody,” Combs allegedly ordered him, he said. Florez added that he didn’t call the police because “there was no victim there, obviously nobody was pressing charges.”
Under cross examination by Combs’ defense lawyer Brian Steel, Florez conceded that while he “definitely” considered the cash offer a bribe, he also recalled telling Combs he would have to pay for damaging the hotel. Florez said he didn’t include any mention of a third person, an unidentified man, being in the hotel room because the man didn’t say anything.
In the government’s opening statement in Combs’ criminal trial Monday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Emily A. Johnson told jurors that Combs attacked Ventura in the hallway that day, kicking and dragging her after she fled their hotel room following a coerced threesome with a male sex worker. Johnson said the evidence will show Combs went on to purchase surveillance video of the sixth-floor incident from hotel security with $100,000 cash stuffed in a brown paper bag.
In May, CNN obtained a copy of the harrowing hotel surveillance video from a confidential source. On Monday, jurors saw the hotel video when it was played by prosecutors in court. After first denying Ventura’s claims against him, Combs posted an apology on social media last May, admitting his “behavior on that video is inexcusable.”
Combs, 55, was indicted in September and has pleaded not guilty to charges of sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy, and transportation to engage in prostitution. He was arrested in New York City on Sept. 16 and has been detained at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn leading up to trial on charges he trafficked Ventura as well as another woman identified by the pseudonym “Jane.”
In her dueling opening statement Monday, Combs’ defense lawyer Teny Geragos told jurors the video from the InterContinental Hotel showed a regrettable incident of domestic violence, not evidence that Combs used his power and wealth to exploit women and cover it up, as prosecutors allege. Geragos claimed the hotel beating was sparked by evidence of alleged infidelity found on a cell phone. She denied Ventura was trying to escape an incident of sex trafficking.
Ventura is expected to testify as a key witness during the eight-week trial. Prosecutors’ indictment closely mirrors the claims she made in her bombshell sex-trafficking lawsuit filed in November 2023.
