Diddy’s ‘culture of silence became apparent’ after 1999 shooting exoneration

A new Law&Crime series podcast The Rise and Fall of Diddy from the Wondery network just dropped, detailing Sean Combs’s path from being on top of the world as a Hip Hop visionary to awaiting trial for alleged sexual abuse and trafficking.

Episode one dives into the beginning of the disgraced mogul’s legal battles, starting with the infamous 1999 New York City nightclub shooting which he was ultimately found not guilty of.

The Bad Boy executive’s then-protogé, up-and-coming rapper Moses ‘Shyne’ Barrow, ended up taking the fall for the shooting, which the podcast claims marked the beginning of a “culture of silence” that “started to become apparent” after the trial was over.

The new podcast takes a deep dive into Diddy’s legal battles that tarnished his legacy, making his name “synonymous with scandal,” starting with the high profile trial that changed everything.

As the story goes, in December of 1999, Diddy – known at the time as Puff Daddy – was at a club near Times Square with his bodyguard, then-girlfriend Jennifer Lopez, and Shyne when an altercation occurred, leading to a shooting that left three bystanders injured.

The “urban legend,” according to the podcast, is that the gun was allegedly brought into the club inside Jennifer Lopez’s purse, and was fired by Diddy when Matthew “Scar” Allen supposedly threw money at the rapper. One of the injured witnesses, Natania Reuben, who was shot in the face, testified in 2001 that she saw Diddy fire a gun.

Shyne, who was signed to Combs’s record label Bad Boy Records, maintains he fired into the air in self defense, but ended up being convicted of first-degree assault, reckless endangerment, and criminal possession of an illegal weapon, and served more than eight years in prison. After his release in 2009, Shyne was deported to his home country of Belize, despite spending most of his life in the States.

Though the gun was discovered in his vehicle, Diddy, who was represented by O.J. Simpson’s lawyer Johnnie Cochran, was found not guilty of four weapons-related charges and bribing his driver to claim ownership of his gun.

Jennifer Lopez was never charged or implicated in the shooting, and the couple ended their relationship shortly after their arrest.

After the high profile trial was over, walking away legally unscathed, Combs changed his name from Puff Daddy to P. Diddy which the podcast claims was an attempt to reinvent himself and make over his image.

The podcast notes this as the beginning of the “culture of silence” surrounding Diddy’s alleged criminal activity, noting that when it comes to the infamous shooting, “As quickly as it came up, it went away.”

New episodes of ‘The Rise and Fall of Diddy’ will be available on Wednesdays.

Click here to follow the Mirror US on Google News to stay up to date with all the latest news, sport and entertainment stories.

This post was originally published on this site be sure to check out more of their content.