Long before Sean "Puff Daddy" Combs became one of the music industry's biggest stars, he promoted a 1991 celebrity charity basketball game at which nine people died in a stampede.
On Monday, the rapper testified in court for the first time about how hundreds of people stormed the doors and crushed into a stairway at a New York City College campus."We were pleading with people to move back," Combs said. "It's almost hard to explain in words the hysteria. . . . You could see panic on everybody's face."
Combs testified as part of a lawsuit filed against the college and the state by the family of one of those killed and seven others who were injured. The plaintiffs also allege that Combs oversold the event.
Former Deputy Mayor Milton Mollen said in a 1992 report that the gym capacity was 2,730, but twice as many may have tried to get in.