Did Diddy Plot to Blow Up Kid Cudi’s Car?
Last week, Sean “Diddy” Combs was arrested in Manhattan after a grand jury indicted the hip-hop mogul on charges of sex trafficking and racketeering. In the 14-page indictment, the prosecution accused Combs of a pattern of intimidation, coercion, and violence in order to keep his victims quiet and submissive. Part of the prosecution’s claim is that Combs and/or his associates committed “multiple acts of arson.” The New York Times reported that in a letter requesting Combs’s detention while he awaits trial, the prosecution elaborated on one particularly notable incident.
In the letter filed last week, prosecutors claim that on December 22, 2011, Combs and a co-conspirator “kidnapped an individual at gunpoint to facilitate breaking into and entering the residence of another [person].” Approximately two weeks later, according to prosecutors, Combs’s associates returned to the homeowner’s garage, sliced open the top to their convertible, and dropped a Molotov cocktail inside, setting the car on fire. The letter states that extensive reports from both police and fire departments concluded that the fire was set intentionally. It also claims that there are witnesses who can testify to hearing Combs “bragging about his role” in destroying the car.
This incident might sound familiar. Last year, Cassandra “Cassie” Ventura accused Combs of rape and abuse in a civil suit. As part of her complaint, she claimed that Combs had orchestrated the arson of rapper Kid Cudi’s car. Ventura and Combs had an on-and-off relationship from 2007 to 2018, and while they were broken up in 2011, she began a brief relationship with Kid Cudi.
In her complaint, Ventura claims that once she was back with Combs, he found emails between her and Kid Cudi. Combs allegedly “became enraged and proceeded to place a manual corkscrew between his fingers and lunged at Ms. Ventura.” She ran away to Kid Cudi’s home to “escape [Combs’s] wrath,” only to return to Combs when she felt as though she “could not escape” him or his “network of enforcers.”
While attending Paris Fashion Week in February 2012, Ventura says that Combs told her he intended to “blow up” Kid Cudi’s car and that he wanted to ensure the rapper was home when it happened. “Around that time, Kid Cudi’s car exploded in his driveway,” the complaint reads. While the two timelines don’t line up exactly (the prosecution’s letter implies that the car explosion would have happened in January 2012), the stories are remarkably similar.
When Ventura filed her complaint in November of last year, Kid Cudi gave a brief statement to the New York Times. “This is all true,” he said via a spokeswoman.
We have reached out to representatives for Combs and will update this post when we hear back.
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