Sean “Diddy” Combs performed a bird sacrifice hours before he was acquitted on all charges related to a New York nightclub shooting in 1999, the music mogul’s former bodyguard has claimed.
Combs stood trial alongside rapper Shyne, now known as Moses Barrow, after the shooting at Manhattan nightclub Club New York left three bystanders injured.
In the new Hulu documentary The Honorable Shyne, Combs’s former bodyguard Gene Deal claims that while Combs was on his way to learn the verdict in the trial he stopped in New York’s Central Park.
There, Deal says he saw Combs drop to his knees in front of another man before smoke swirled around him. Deal believes the smoke to have been caused by burning sage.
The bodyguard says he saw the man holding a bible while praying and laying his hands on Combs. He then told Combs to remove a white bird from a cage. After Combs threw the animal into the air, it dropped to the ground dead.
Hours later, Combs learned he had been acquitted of all charges.
Barrow, meanwhile, was convicted of assault and reckless endangerment and went on to spend nine years in maximum security prison.
The Independent has approached Combs’s representatives for comment.
Earlier this year, Barrow gave an interview in his home country of Belize, where he is now a politician and Leader of the Opposition, in which he said that Combs had “destroyed my life.”
He told Channel 5 News: “When I was an 18-year-old kid, just wanting to do nothing other than make my mother proud and make Belize proud and, do what all of us want to do, be recognized for our talent and take over the world, I was defending him, and he turned around and called witnesses to testify against me.
“He pretty much sent me to prison. That is the context by which you must always describe that relationship. Yes, I forgave. I moved on. But let us not pretend as if I was in Miami for Thanksgiving and Christmas.
“Let us not lose sight of what the cold, hard facts are. This is not someone who I vacationed with and who he and I enjoyed this great, intimate relationship of brotherhood.
“This is someone who destroyed my life, and who I forgave, and who I moved on, and for the better interest of Belize, because he was in a position at that time to give scholarships and to maybe invest.
“I would not deny attempting to bring the investment to Belize and contribution to education to Belize.
Referring to Combs’s recent arrest on sex trafficking charges, Barrow added: “Do I take any joy with what he is going through? Absolutely not. I am different than other people — no one needs to fail for me to succeed.”
