Rhymes explains bodyguard murder silence

Busta Rhymes has spoken of his pain at watching his friend and bodyguard Israel Ramirez die from a gunshot wound earlier this year.

The rapper has refused to speak to police about what he saw on February 5 when his minder was shot outside a New York City warehouse, where the video for Rhymes' track Touch It was being filmed.

Rhymes - real name Trevor Smith - claims he didn't see the incident, although he now wishes he had never asked Ramirez to work that fateful night.

He says: "I don't really care about what anybody has to say. You don't really know who was the source of the problem, all you know is a handful of people were arguing with each other. We was inside shooting a video, and on the way outside, that's when everything happened, so I was told to stay inside.

"I really didn't get a chance to see what went down. When we went outside, that's when we saw my friend on the ground, dying slowly.

"If I didn't ask him to come to work, he'd have been at home with his family. That's the only guilt I live with, but still in that sense I don't have any guilt, because that was the way we made money together.

"He always came to work and got home safely, because I don't condone that kind of activity and I'm not a person that has a reputation of violence in my life."