A Florida woman accused of driving across the country to fire a rifle at Rihanna and A$AP Rocky’s home, hitting a trailer the celebrity couple was inside and a nursery where their kids were, has been indicted by a grand jury on 14 felony counts including attempted murder.
The indictment against 36-year-old Ivanna Lisette Ortiz of Orlando was unsealed Wednesday by a Los Angeles County judge.
Ortiz, appearing in court wearing yellow jail clothes, spoke only to her attorney, who entered a not guilty plea for her. The judge then ordered her held on $2.6 million bail.
The move came a day after another judge ruled that Ortiz is mentally competent to stand trial. The secret grand jury proceedings were held as Ortiz was undergoing months of psychiatric evaluation. The jurors returned their indictment June 18, but it was kept under wraps for three months until the judge ruled on her competency. Now, a case that appeared stalled — possibly permanently — is on a fast track to trial.
No one was injured in the March 8 shooting. Authorities allege Ortiz drove a Tesla up to the gates of the Beverly Hills-area property of the singing superstar and her rap star partner, A$AP Rocky, pointed an AR-15 style rifle out the window and fired at least 20 rounds toward the property and the neighboring house.
“This is a person who wanted to kill Rihanna,” Deputy District Attorney Alexander Bott said outside court. “Everyone else was collateral damage.”
Bullets tore through the Airstream trailer, according to a police report. Shots also struck the wall of their home's nursery, where their three small children were with their nanny. Rihanna’s mother and several staffers also were in the home, and authorities say she also fired shots toward a neighbor's house.
Both Rihanna and her mother, Monica Fenty, testified to the grand jury, as did Hollywood agent Tracey Jacobs, who was listed among the victims from the property in the indictment.
Their testimony remains under seal but will become public in about two weeks unless the defense seeks to keep them secret and the judge agrees.
Rihanna told investigators just after the shooting that she “suddenly heard approximately ten loud sounds like something banging on metal,” and pulled Rocky out of a bed and onto the ground. She said she opened curtains and saw bullet marks in the windshield right in front of where she had been standing.
Deputy Public Defender Derek Dillman, Ortiz's attorney, did not speak to reporters outside the courtroom, and a message seeking comment from the public defender's office on the indictment was not immediately answered. Other than her not guilty pleas, her lawyers have not publicly addressed the charges, saying only that they would work to defend her rights.
Investigators said that on the day of her arrest, Ortiz told them: “I wasn’t attempting murder.”
Ortiz was charged with very similar counts in March. The new indictment supersedes those charges. The secret grand jury proceedings allow prosecutors to skip California’s preliminary hearing process, where evidence must be presented publicly to see if a trial is merited.
The indictment also charges Ortiz with 10 counts of assault with an assault weapon — one for each of the people on the two properties — and three counts of shooting at an inhabited dwelling or camper. It names the couple's three children Rza, Riot and Rocki, all under age 5, as victims. The assault weapon counts carry a stiffer sentence than the original charges of assault with a semiautomatic firearm.
She could get life in prison if convicted of all counts.
Reports have been sealed on the psychiatric evaluations that paused the case shortly after it began, and there was no public discussion of the details of her mental state. Prosecutors have not said anything about a motive or cited any connection between Rihanna and Ortiz, a longtime licensed speech pathologist. But in videos posted on Facebook and YouTube in the months before the shooting, Ortiz made increasingly angry comments on Rihanna that sometimes took the form of threats, at one point calling her a “devil.”
A nine-time Grammy Award winner, Rihanna has had 14 No. 1 hits on the Billboard Hot 100, including “We Found Love,” “Work,” “Umbrella” and “Disturbia.”
