Fashion designer Bryana “Bonna” Bongolan took the stand in Sean “Diddy” Combs’ sex trafficking and racketeering trial on Wednesday, June 4, and testified that the disgraced music mogul once described himself as “the devil” and, in a separate incident, dangled her from a 17th-floor balcony.
Bongolan testified that Diddy lifted her up one early morning in September 2016 and “held” her on the rail of the balcony of Cassie Ventura‘s 17th-floor apartment in Los Angeles. She described the incident as lasting for around 10 or 15 seconds.
“He basically came up from behind me,” she said. “He lifted me up and had me on top of the rail. I was trying not to slip and pushing back… For a split second, I was thinking that I was going to fall.”
“Do you know what the fuck you did?” she recalled Diddy asking her before he “threw” her onto some furniture nearby. She said that even today, she did not know what he was referring to.
In the aftermath of the alleged attack, Bongolan continued, she had back and neck pain. She also said the incident resulted in bruising on her leg, and photographs of that bruised leg that she said an ex-girlfriend took were shown to the jury.
Bongolan said that she continues to have night terrors and paranoia as the result of the alleged incident.
“I used to scream a lot in my sleep,” she said, but that has improved with time.
Bongolan filed a $10 million lawsuit against Diddy over the incident last year. She told the jury that she filed the lawsuit in order to “seek justice for what happened to me on the balcony.”
The designer also testified about a different encounter with Diddy in early 2016. She said that she, Cassie, and a photographer named Bad Boi (no relation to Combs’ record label) were on the beach in Los Angeles, and Combs was at a house nearby.
At one point during that day, Bongolan said, Combs “came up really close to my face and said something along the lines of, ‘I’m the devil, and I could kill you.’ I was terrified, but because of the cocaine [that she had taken earlier that day] I had a little confidence.”
Bongolan told the courtroom that she and Ventura went on a shopping trip around that same time, but were not joined by Diddy. The Bad Boy Records founder did, however, leave Cassie distressed after he texted to inquired about her whereabouts, and then sent the singer a list of places she and Bongolan had been that day, despite the fact that he wasn’t present.
In 2015, Bongolan became friends with Cassie while they were working on a fashion line with Diamond Supply Co. She said she witnessed the abusive nature of Cassie’s relationship with Diddy when he “threw a knife in Cassie’s direction” from “pretty close,” and that Cassie “threw the knife back.”
Under cross-examination from Diddy’s attorney Nicole Westmoreland, Bongolan admitted that she and Cassie had used drugs together frequently — though she is now sober — and that she used to sell her friend drugs “on at least a weekly basis.” She explained that both of them had a taste for what she called “coco puffs” — marijuana blunts sprinkled with cocaine.
She also said under Westmoreland’s questioning that she and Cassie had spoken about the alleged balcony incident both before Cassie filed her November 2023 lawsuit against Combs, and again in the aftermath. She denied talking about the possibility of filing her own suit against the mogul during those discussions.
Bongolan’s cross-examination continues on Thursday, and an anonymous alleged victim of sexual assault by Combs is scheduled to take the stand after her.
