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Rapper Testifies in Combs Trial; Two People Killed Outside Capital Jewish Museum; Jet Crashes in San Diego. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired May 22, 2025 - 13:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Multiple people killed when a business jet crashes into a San Diego neighborhood, setting about 15 homes on fire. The city's police chief says the scene was -- quote -- "horrific."

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: A young couple who worked at Israel's embassy in Washington killed outside the Capital Jewish Museum. The suspect waited for police to arrive before saying he -- quote -- "did it for Gaza."

And, at trial, gripping testimony from Kid Cudi, the rapper who had a brief relationship with Sean "Diddy" Combs' former girlfriend Cassie Ventura, as he details a tense beating with Combs after his Porsche was set on fire.

We're following these major developing stories and many more all coming in right here to CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

SANCHEZ: Thanks so much for joining us this afternoon. I'm Boris Sanchez, alongside Brianna Keilar, in the nation's capital.

And, this hour, we start following breaking news out of a military housing community in San Diego. Multiple people are confirmed dead after a small private business jet trying to land at a nearby airport crashed into this neighborhood, setting several homes and parked cars that you see on your screen on fire, sending neighbors scrambling.

It's unclear right now how many people were on board the jet, but the assistant fire chief says that all the fatalities appear to be from the plane. Officials say the impact left a devastating trail of destruction and toxic streams of jet fuel pouring down the streets, soaking front lawns. The assistant fire chief saying there is fuel all over the place.

KEILAR: The FAA says the Cessna 550 went down just before 4:00 a.m. local time in the Murphy Canyon neighborhood and was just miles from landing at the Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport.

This was a flight that took off from New Jersey's Teterboro Airport Wednesday night, and officials say it ran into foggy weather in San Diego. Listen to how first responders described the scene to emergency dispatch.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We are reconfiguring this, three units and rack the Salmon Street explosion or claims (INAUDIBLE) aircraft overturn and then an explosion. Packed in the backyard. The house is on fire.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Agent 39 had seen multiple vehicles, multiple structures on fire. Engine 39 on a hydrant, attacking the fire Engine 39 sample.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We got multiple explosions over here. We're doing evacuations. We got multiple houses on fire.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're going to probably have several hundred people evacuated. We just don't have a place set up yet for them to go.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: At least half-a-block south of our impact scene is going to be the street and yards. Front yards are completely saturated with fuel. Use extreme caution doing evacs in those yards.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

KEILAR: Let's go to CNN aviation correspondent Pete Muntean, who is at the Magic Wall for us.

Pete, explain what happened here and what you can tell us about the type of plane that was involved.

PETE MUNTEAN, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: The big takeaway right now, Brianna, is, this could have been so much worse. And the NTSB will arrive on the scene today. They really have their work cut out for them as they try and find the voice recorder and the flight data recorder from this airplane.

It's called a Citation II, a relatively forgiving business jet. It has a straight wing, makes it very easy to fly, seats between six, eight or 10 people, depending on the configuration. We know the plane went down in this neighborhood. And you can see the aftermath here, primarily charred cars on the street there that were parked on the shoulder, this community primarily enlisted in the Navy from the nearby Navy bases.

We know that the weather at the time of this crash was particularly tricky, the cloud ceiling very low, the visibility about two miles and mist. So the pilots would have had a difficult time getting in to Montgomery Field there in San Diego. That is something investigators will want to look at. That is key.

They will also be looking at the history of this flight. We know this flight took off from Teterboro, New Jersey, late last night, late Wednesday night, about 11:00 p.m., flew about a three hour, 42-minute leg here to this airport near Wichita, Kansas, spent about 45 minutes on the ground there, and then continued on to Montgomery Field, where it was set to arrive around 3:45 am local time. Obviously, this plane did not make it. We know that the tower was not

open at the time of this crash, meaning that tower flips into what's called a common traffic advisory frequency. The pilot radioed that he was on a three-mile straight-in to Runway 28 there, Montgomery Field. It's 28 Left and Right. They're parallel numbers, parallel runways. I have flown in and out of this airport, but apparently did not make it.

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That was the last fateful radio transmission. What's really key now is what we're able to glean early on from the flight data, from flight tracking sites like Flightradar24, FlightAware, and ADS-B Exchange. We know that this was the last recorded position of the flight. This is Murphy Canyon here. You can see the streets and the neighborhoods.

We also know there were high tension wires in this area, and there's a bit of a hilltop here. We know that, at this point, the plane was recorded at about 500 feet, according to the data from ADS-B Exchange. This is three miles, as the crow flies, between the threshold of the runway here at Montgomery Airport and the crash site.

If you go back and interpolate this data and look at the -- what is supposed to be the approach path, if this pilot was flying what's called the ILS, the radio beam that sends you down to the runway in poor weather, the elevation that the airplane should have been at here was 1,380 feet. So we're talking a difference of more than 800 feet, and that is a pretty big discrepancy.

And this will be something that is key. Why was this airplane so low on the approach as they were coming into land at Montgomery Field? That is something that investigators will really want to know. Were they doing something called ducking under?

That's something that -- a trap that pilots fall into when the cloud ceiling is low when they're trying to make it in when the weather is poor and make contact with the ground, be able to see the approach lights and the features around the airport, so then they can continue on the approach.

Some really, really big questions here, and now investigators will really focus in on the environment, the airplane, and the pilots. We still do not know how many people were on board this business jet. Could have been so much worse.

SANCHEZ: Pete Muntean, thank you so much for breaking that down for us.

Let's actually take you now live to the scene of the crash. That's where CNN's Stephanie Elam just arrived.

Stephanie, walk us through what you're seeing.

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It's unbelievable, it's actually unfathomable, Boris, that no one outside of the plane lost their lives. Take a look behind me here at this house, at this car. Remember that

this happened in the middle of the night on a school night, right? So you have people who would be in their home sleeping, and you look at this devastation.

I walked down to the other side of this street because it does run down a hill, and you could just see the cars are burned out on either side of the street. There's just glass blown out. I saw a piece of a car that had kind of melted off the back right corner, because it would appear that something fell as this plane was falling -- was coming down and burned off the back corner of that car.

It's pretty contained to this area of the street, going down the street here, and then running down into the road. We heard earlier in that press conference that they said jet fuel was running down the street, which could have been part of what caused this.

But this is a densely built community here in San Diego. And, right now, we have very clear skies, but I can tell you, driving down here from Los Angeles, there was a lot of fog in parts of it coming down here to get here. Now that it's warming up, it's starting to clear out in a lot of this area.

But you look at that devastation behind us, you look at how that house is impacted, those cars, and it's really, really unbelievable that no one on the ground lost their lives, even though we know that people who were on their plane did here. People are coming out to see this in the neighborhood, a lot of military people here, as you have heard, coming out to see this, but this devastation is remarkable that no more people on the ground lost their lives, Boris.

KEILAR: Yes, and we saw, Stephanie, people in video evacuating carrying small children with them. This is a community where there are families as well.

Stephanie, we know you just got on scene. You're going to continue to do some reporting there.

Let's bring in CNN safety analyst and former FAA safety inspector David Soucie.

David, you hear Stephanie describing what she's seeing, and it just being almost unbelievable that the deaths in this case are confined to the airplane. What do you think as you're learning about this?

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: It's incredible, again, that that happened. It obviously took some skill on the pilot's part to make sure that they weren't landing directly on an airplane -- I have investigated a couple of accidents in residential areas where the pilot doesn't take that maneuver and ends up landing on buildings and on cars.

So, that's really a measure from the pilot that took that extra care to make sure that he was landing on an area where there would not be significant damage directly to a specific building. So, that's what I would look at first. The second thing that, as Pete mentioned, is the flight control or the flight data recorders and see what's going on there.

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One of my biggest concerns is that this airplane, specifically this Citation, is one of the most reliable airplanes. I had the opportunity, the pleasure of working on these airplanes. They're very docile. As far as corporate jets go, they're easy to fly. Their landing speed is low. It's a very great aircraft for using for corporate measures.

But, at this point, again, we don't know what happened. And then the last thing, I'm sorry to go run on so long, but is the fact that the range of this aircraft is about 2,000 miles. So if it took off from New Jersey and was headed to California, it was on the end of its range, although, because there's jet fuel on the ground, I think it still had fuel aboard.

We will have to wait to see what we find out.

SANCHEZ: That is a significant point. I wonder what you make of reports that there were significant fog and that visibility may have been an issue. How complex is it to make a landing in those conditions?

SOUCIE: Well, it's very complex.

And this aircraft specifically can be certified for single-pilot. So, if it was a single-pilot airplane and there was only one pilot in charge, it can be a lot, a large workload to try to come into a foggy area like that and find a way around it.

So it could possibly be that they were flying under the ILS to try to get visibility to see where the airport was and get visible recognition of the airport at that location. So, I would suspect that the fact that it was that low would have indicated either a fuel starvation, which I don't think is the case here because they did make a smooth descent, but I would be looking at that as well.

KEILAR: And we understand there are multiple fatalities, but we don't know how many. Is that unusual, David?

SOUCIE: It really is.

But, looking at the extent of the damage to the aircraft, I have done several aircraft, corporate jet accidents like this, and it is really difficult, considering the level of damage -- I don't want to get too morose about it -- but to actually identify how many people are on the aircraft.

So that may take a little while, considering the damage to the airplane.

SANCHEZ: David Soucie, appreciate having your perspective and expertise on.

Coming up: a pivotal moment in the Sean "Diddy" Combs sex crimes trial. Grammy Award-winning rapper Kid Cudi is taking the stand. We're following the latest from inside the courtroom.

KEILAR: And a major investigation is under way after two Israeli Embassy staff members were shot and killed outside the Capital Jewish Museum here in Washington, D.C. -- what we're learning about the sole suspect.

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KEILAR: CNN has learned that the suspect in the fatal shooting of two staff members from the Israeli Embassy here in Washington is expected to make his first appearance in federal court this afternoon.

The two staff members were shot and killed last night outside of the Capital Jewish Museum. Eyewitness video captured the moment that police led the 30-year-old suspect away from the scene.

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ELIAS RODRIGUEZ, SUSPECT: Free, free, Palestine! Free, free Palestine!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE)

RODRIGUEZ: Free, free Palestine! Free, free Palestine!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: The shooting victims have been identified as Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgram.

This was addressed at the White House during a press briefing by Karoline Leavitt, the press secretary, just moments ago.

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KAROLINE LEAVITT, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: President Trump is saddened and outraged over the brutal murder of two Israeli Embassy staff here in Washington, D.C., last night.

Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgram were a beautiful young couple. In fact, we learned that Yaron was planning to propose to Sara next week in Jerusalem. Yaron's father, Daniel, spoke about the young couple's devotion for one another this morning. He said: "They were in love, one for the other. The embassy told us they were like a star couple at the embassy. I never expected something like this. He had his whole life before him."

These words, especially every parent knows, are heart-wrenching. The evil of antisemitism must be eradicated from our society.

I spoke to the attorney general this morning. The Department of Justice will be prosecuting the perpetrator responsible for this to the fullest extent of the law. Hatred has no place in the United States of America under President Donald Trump. Everyone here at the White House is praying for the victims' friends and families during this unimaginable time.

Now for some scheduling announcements. On Saturday morning, President Trump...

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SANCHEZ: CNN's Alex Marquardt is live at the scene outside the Jewish Museum.

Alex, what are you hearing?

ALEX MARQUARDT, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, Boris, the Israeli ambassador to Washington came down here just a few moments ago and spoke with reporters.

And he said that the Israeli prime minister and President Trump had just spoken, that Trump reaffirmed his support for Israel and, of course, the fight against antisemitism. I asked the ambassador whether he had any updates in terms of what we're learning about the suspect, Elias Rodriguez, in terms of possible writings, affiliations.

He did not have an update there. I also asked him about the connection between the ongoing war in Gaza and Prime Minister Netanyahu's war goal, his main war goal of eradicating Hamas, and how that ties in with the growth, the increase in antisemitism that we have seen around the world.

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That's something that the ambassador rejected. He said that Israel's defense of itself is not contributing to antisemitism. Rather, it's countries like France. And he singled out France for moves that they are making that he believes is fueling antisemitism.

Here's a little bit more of what he has to say.

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YECHIEL LEITER, ISRAELI AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED STATES: Antisemitism is on the rise not because of Israel's responding, but because of countries like France who, under this circumstance, now, tomorrow, plan to propose the unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state.

So, the French, in their contorted morality under the government of Macron, is going to declare October 7 Palestine independence day.

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MARQUARDT: And, Boris and Brianna, the ambassador also speaking about the young couple whose lives were lost, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgram, who were well-known to be a couple at the embassy.

One Israeli official told me that they were like the poster from a Netflix rom-com, that they had the cutest love life. It was well-known that Lischinsky was going to be proposing to Milgram next week in Jerusalem. Lischinsky's family is just outside Jerusalem, the ambassador said.

And, in fact, the two families -- sorry -- Sarah Milgram had never met his family. Milgram had worked at the embassy. She's an American. She doesn't have Israeli citizenship, but she worked at the embassy since just after October 7.

She worked on events. She organized group trips to Israel, while Lischinsky was the aide to a senior diplomat. He worked on political issues. And his dream was to become an Israeli diplomat, and, of course, sadly, the dreams of both this couple and their lives cut short last night. Lischinsky was 30 years old, Milgram just 26 years old -- Boris, Brianna.

KEILAR: Yes, a beautiful couple, and two families and a community in mourning.

Alex Marquardt, thank you so much for the latest.

We are continuing to follow breaking news out of San Diego, a small plane crashing into a neighborhood. We're going to speak with a first responder about the situation on the ground there ahead on CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

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KEILAR: Just moments ago, a new witness took the stand in Sean "Diddy" Combs' racketeering and sex trafficking trial.

A makeup artist who worked for Combs and his ex-girlfriend is now beginning testimony. She's the first witness that jurors are hearing from after rapper Kid Cudi.

SANCHEZ: Yes, the Grammy Award winner testified for more than an hour, telling jurors about his time dating Cassie Ventura, at one point describing how his Porsche was set on fire and the time he says that Combs broke into his home.

CNN's Kara Scannell and defense attorney Misty Marris are live outside the courtroom, and they join us now live.

Kara, first to you.

Walk us through the big moments from Kid Cudi.

KARA SCANNELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: So, Kid Cudi testified about three central moments in his experience and interactions with Sean Combs. One of them was this break-in.

He said that Cassie Ventura had called him, saying that she sounded stressed, and so he picked her up, as she asked. And then he said that they got a phone call from a friend who said that Sean Combs was at his house. So, Kid Cudi said he got in his car and was driving to the home and had called Combs.

And this is part of the exchange.

He said to Combs: "You in my house?"

Combs said: "What's up?"

Cudi said: "Are you in my house?"

Combs said: "I just want to talk to you."

Cudi said: "I'm on my way. I will be right down."

Combs said: "I'm over here waiting for you."

And Cudi said, when he arrived at his home, Combs was not there, but he said a security camera was moved. He said, when he went inside his home, there were some Christmas gifts for family members that had been unwrapped. And his dog, who normally had free rein of the house, was behind the door in the bathroom. He said it left his dog jittery and on edge.

And this happened because Ventura told Cudi that Combs had just found out that she was in a relationship in dating Cudi at the time. Then -- Cudi then went to Ventura's family's home for Christmas, but he said that, in the beginning of the new year in January of 2012, they stopped speaking to each other and they had broken up.

It was then after that, that Cudi said he was at someone else's house, and he received a call from his dog's babysitter, who said that his Porsche was on fire. So, Cudi again, got in his car, was driving back to his home, and he said that he arrived and found that the roof, the fabric roof of his Porsche had been slashed, that there was a Molotov cocktail that had been thrown in there, and that there was smoke damage on the car door and on the driver's seat.

And the jury was shown photographs of that damage that Cudi's friend had taken when he got to the car before Cudi got there. Then Cudi said that there was no evidence. He was asked by Combs lawyers if Combs was there, any accomplices of his were there. He said there wasn't.

But then, the next day, Cudi said he reached out to Combs to meet up because Combs had been wanting to speak to him, and because of the fire of this car, he said he reached out to him, and they had a meeting at the Soho House in Hollywood.

So, Cudi testified, when he walked in, Combs was standing in a room that had a window looking out onto Beverly Hills. He said Combs was standing, staring out the window with his hands behind his back like a Marvel supervillain. That elicited laughs from the jury.

And they had a discussion there. They discussed both -- Cassie Ventura, that they had both been dating her.

And Cudi said, when he was -- the meeting was over, he shook Combs' hand, and said, "Well, what about my car?"