A woman who has long claimed Sean “Diddy” Combs shot her in the face during his infamous 1999 club outing with Jennifer Lopez celebrated his recent arrest.
Natania Reuben said in a new interview that her daughter, Nirvana, alerted her Monday that the Bad Boy Records founder, 54, had been detained by federal agents and hit with three charges: sex trafficking by force, racketeering conspiracy and transportation to engage in prostitution.
“She says, ‘Mommy, guess who’s in custody?’” she recalled to the Daily Beast Wednesday. “I asked her if it was somebody locally in town that we know. And she’s like, ‘No, he’s bigger.’”
Once Reuben realized it was Combs, she said she “screamed out to God, ‘Thank you, merciful father!’”
In December 1999, Reuben was at a Manhattan nightclub with a friend when the “Act Bad” rapper and his then-girlfriend, Lopez, arrived for a party.
The couple was also joined by Combs’ bodyguard Anthony “Wolf” Jones and rapper Jamal “Shyne” Barrow, who was signed to Bad Boy Records.
During the party, Combs got into a verbal argument with an alleged drug dealer that soon led to gunshots being fired.
Reuben said she was in the line of fire when she saw Combs allegedly shoot her in the face.
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“I watched him,” she told the Daily beast. “I saw him with my own eyes.”
Reuben, who was hit in the middle of her eyes with a 9mm hollow-point bullet, said she felt like she was hit with “Paul Bunyan’s flaming-hot sledgehammer.
“I called out to God and said, ‘Don’t take me. I’m not finished raising my kids, I have work to do,’” she recalled, referring to her two young sons at the time.
After the shooting, Combs, Barrow, Jones and the “Selena” actress, now 55, fled the scene but were pulled over by police after a short chase. Cops found a stolen and loaded 9mm semiautomatic gun, and the three men were hit with a weapons possessions charge. (Lopez was arrested and held in a cell for more than 12 hours but never charged.)
The hip-hop mogul, the “Bad Boyz” rapper and Jones went to trial, and Reuben testified that it was Combs who had shot her in the face.
However, surgeons were unable to safely remove all of the fragments from her face to prove a ballistics match with the pistol found with Combs the night of the shooting.
The music executive was acquitted during the trial and later settled civil suits with Reuben and other victims of the nightclub shooting. (Reuben reportedly received $1.8 million.)
Though Reuben always declared that Combs was the one who shot her, Barrow, 45, was found guilty and sentenced to 10 years behind bars.
After he was released in 2009, Barrow was deported to his birthplace, Belize, where he now serves as the leader of the opposition in the Belize House of Representatives and the leader of the Belize United Democratic Party.
Lopez, for her part, stayed with Combs throughout his trial but ended their romance for good in 2001 when he was accused of cheating on her with Kim Porter.
Now that the Sean John clothing founder has been arrested and is sitting in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, NY, without bail, Reuben said she is ecstatic.
“One of the best days ever,” she told the outlet, adding that Combs may not have had so many victims if he had been convicted over the 1999 club shooting.
Combs has pleaded not guilty to the sex trafficking and racketeering charges. He is currently facing at least eight lawsuits from people accusing him of rape, sexual assault and more crimes, all of which he has also denied.
If you or someone you know is affected by any of the issues raised in this story, call the Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-330-0226.
If you or someone you know is affected by any of the issues raised in this story, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) or text START to 88788.
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