Club New York Shooting Victim Natania Reuben Says Sean Combs Shot Her in the Face and Wants the Bullet Fragments Tested
In the early hours of December 27, 1999, gunfire tore through Club New York. Natania Reuben was hit in the face. She says she still carries fragments of a 9mm round. She says Sean Combs pulled the trigger. Combs has never been convicted of that shooting. A $1.8 million civil settlement closed part of the 1999 case without a criminal finding on who fired.
One of the three people hurt that night, Reuben told NewsNation’s «Elizabeth Vargas Reports» in March 2024 that she wants a doctor to cut fragments out of her face so ballistics can be run. «I’m willing to have a doctor remove a part of the nine-millimeter bullet in my face so that they can use it as evidence if need be for this trial, and it may cost me my life,» she said.
Jamal «Shyne» Barrow admitted at trial that he fired a gun that night. Reuben has maintained for decades that Barrow was held accountable for Combs. The shooting happened around 2:55 a.m. at the now-closed Times Square club. She has described nine fragments remaining in her face and head, and lasting effects she says include seizures. Three people were struck. Contemporaneous reporting described them as bystanders.
Barrow, then 21 and in Combs’ group, was arrested as he fled with a gun. Jennifer Lopez, then dating Combs, was arrested, cooperated, and was released without charges. Combs and Lopez left in a Lincoln Navigator and were stopped on Eighth Avenue. After a six-week trial in 2001, Barrow was convicted of assault and gun possession and sentenced to ten years. Combs and bodyguard Anthony «Wolf» Jones were acquitted of weapons charges. Combs has denied firing.
Reuben testified that she felt as though «a flaming hot sledgehammer had hit me in the face» and that she «saw Mr. Combs… pull out a black gun with his right hand.» On NewsNation she said, «I literally watched them pull out the guns, I had a clear point of view. I mean, for God’s sake, I got shot in my nose.» She has also claimed that after the District Attorney’s office received information about a threat, she was relocated out of Brooklyn.
A settled civil case and a renewed spotlight
Reuben filed a $130 million civil lawsuit against Combs and Barrow. Reporting at the time indicated Combs, Barrow, and the club reached confidential settlements with the three wounded clubgoers, with Reuben said to have received $1.8 million. She later appeared in Investigation Discovery’s «Fall of Diddy» and Netflix’s «Sean Combs: The Reckoning.»
Combs’ federal case is a different file
Keep the 1999 shooting distinct from the later federal prosecution. After his September 2024 arrest, a Manhattan jury on July 2, 2025, acquitted Combs of racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking and convicted him on two Mann Act transportation counts. On October 3, 2025, Judge Arun Subramanian sentenced him to 50 months, a $500,000 fine, and five years of supervised release. He has been at FCI Fort Dix. Bureau of Prisons records later listed a projected release of April 15, 2028.
That conviction is not a verdict on Club New York. Prosecutors have not announced a new 1999 shooting charge. In December 2025 Combs appealed the 50-month sentence and asked for immediate release. On March 17, 2026, his lawyers called the sentence a «perversion of justice» and argued the judge relied on acquitted conduct. Oral argument was heard in a federal appeals court on April 9, 2026. Reuben’s allegation sits next to all of that as unfinished business. Bullet fragments in a living face are evidence that has been sitting in a skull for a quarter century.
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