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Prosecution witness says gun was found in Combs' vehicle

Combs: faces up to 15 years

NEW YORK (CNN) -- A police sergeant said Thursday that a gun was found in a silver Lincoln Navigator in which rapper/music producer Sean "Puffy" Combs was riding after a shooting.

Sgt. Jack Konstantinidis testified in Manhattan State Supreme Court that he chased the vehicle for several blocks as it left the Manhattan nightclub where three people were shot and wounded in the early morning hours of December 27, 1999.

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"It went right past me. It almost hit my vehicle. ... I went after it," Konstantinidis said.

Combs, 31, faces gun possession and bribery charges, but is not accused in the shooting at Club New York. Combs' bodyguard, Anthony "Wolf" Jones, 34, is charged with illegal gun possession and bribery. Rapper Jamaal "Shyne" Barrow, 21, who was not in Combs' vehicle, is charged with attempted murder.

Konstantinidis said that after the driver of the Navigator pulled over at the intersection of 54th Street and 8th Avenue, "I came out of my vehicle and I'm yelling in a loud voice to the driver, 'Shut the vehicle, shut the vehicle, shut the vehicle off.' For my own safety, my gun is out."

He said the four occupants -- Combs, Jones, driver Wadel Fenderson and singer-actress Jennifer Lopez -- got out and were searched. While that was being done, Konstantinidis said, another officer saw the gun in the front passenger side of the Navigator.

Prosecutors contend that Combs fired a semiautomatic pistol toward the ceiling inside the club, threw it into the street, and then ordered his driver to take him from the scene to elude police.

Afterwards, prosecutors said, Combs began "a relentless, unremitting barrage" of pressure on Fenderson to claim possession of the gun found in the Navigator. That pressure allegedly included bribery offers.

Earlier Thursday, Officer John Murtagh testified that he heard "approximately three to four gun shots" just before 3 a.m. the morning of the incident and that he stopped Barrow as he was leaving the scene. Murtagh said he removed a gun from Barrow's waistband.

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