"Puffy" Trial: PEOPLE's Report

By Serena Kappes

Monday May 25, 1998 12:00 AM EDT

On Wednesday, after a day off, court was back in session for the trial of Sean "Puffy" Combs, 31, charged with illegal possession of a handgun and bribery after a December 1999 nightclub brawl which resulted in three people being shot. (His bodyguard, Anthony "Wolf" Jones, also is being tried on a gun possession charge, and co-defendant Jamal "Shyne" Barrow is charged with attempted murder.) On the heels of shooting victim's Natania Reuben's dramatic testimony on Monday, a third witness, Julius Jones, 28, who suffered a gunshot wound to his right shoulder, came forward to testify that Combs was holding a gun the night of the incident. Jones, a New York City Parks Department employee who is suing Combs, Barrow, Anthony "Wolf" Jones and Combs's Bad Boy Records for $700 million in a civil lawsuit, was on the stand for most of the day and testified that Combs definitively had a gun. He told the court that, on that fateful December night, the rap entrepeneur was shaking people's hands at Club New York when he encountered an unnamed man who refused -- and an argument ensued. "Everybody was getting excited," Jones recalled on the witness stand. "They started pushing more. I was looking at Sean Combs. I could see his waist up (sic). He has a gun in his hand. In his right hand -- I couldn't believe it." Flanked by his flamboyantly attired attorneys, Johnnie Cochran, Murray Richman and Michael Bachner, whose colorful ties and suits stood out in the otherwise drab courtroom, a somber Combs, dressed in a tailored navy blue suit and sipping from a bottle of Fiji water, shook his head when the claim was made -- again -- that he had a gun. Jones also testified to the prosecution that he "saw Shyne Barrows with a gun. I saw fire. I dropped. I heard three shots. People started going crazy. I was shot and I couldn't move and people were surrounding me. I just thought that I was going to be paralyzed."

Court reporting by PEOPLE's Jennifer Weil

For more on the Combs trial, click here