One of Sean “Diddy” Combs’ former personal assistants testified at his criminal trial on Tuesday and detailed a terrifying incident involving Combs and his rival, Suge Knight.
According to David James, who worked for Combs from 2007 to 2009, Combs once took three handguns into the car around the end of his tenure and instructed James to drive to Mel’s Diner in Los Angeles, where they believed Knight to be.
Just before that, at around 4 a.m., James had driven to the diner with one of Combs’ security guards, Damion Butler (aka D-Roc), to pick up food for Combs and members of his entourage. As they parked the car, a silver Lincoln Navigator, Butler recognized Knight in a car parked a few spots away. Per James, Butler approached Knight and said, “It’s me, D-Roc, Biggie’s boy,” referring to the late rapper the Notorious B.I.G., who was signed to Combs’ Bad Boy Records. (Knight, who is now serving time in prison for a fatal hit-and-run, ran the rival label Death Row Records. While there is no definitive proof, Knight is often speculated to have been involved with the murder of Notorious B.I.G. in 1997. That murder remains unsolved.)
Knight apparently responded to Butler by saying, “What are you doing in my city?,” to which Butler said, “Getting money, you know what it is.” The two then engaged in a friendly handshake.
James said he and Butler then went inside Mel’s Diner to order takeout food, when James noticed four black SUVs pull into the parking lot, and a man handed Knight a gun. Per James, Butler said, “We got to fucking go,” and the two of them managed to get in the car and escape back to Combs’ house in the Hollywood Hills. When they arrived, Combs told James and Butler to get into a different car, a black Escalade, and instructed James to drive back to the diner. At one point, James looked back and saw Combs in the backseat with three handguns in his lap.
“I had a weird sense of calm,” James said. Because they had switched cars, he thought Knight might not see them coming. But he also realized that Combs had brought three guns, and there were three of them in the car. “It was the first time I realized my life was in danger,” James said.
When they arrived at Mel’s Diner about 10 minutes later, Knight was gone. Combs told James to drive around the block, but Knight was nowhere to be found.
A few days later, James resigned as Combs’ personal assistant, giving six months’ notice. Asked by Combs’ attorney why he went along with what he presumed to be a potential shooting, James said, “I didn’t think I had the option to say something.”
James spoke at length about his two-year stint as Combs’ personal assistant, saying it was an intense job with 20-hour days. “There were definitely times where I worked 21 days straight,” he said. He recalled a joke often repeated by Combs’ security detail: “Do you know what rhymes with ‘tired’? ‘Fired.’”
