A Florida woman is expected to be criminally charged Tuesday after she allegedly sprayed bullets at the Beverly Hills home of star singer Rihanna.
Ivana Ortiz, 35, of Orlando is expected to appear in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom on Tuesday afternoon, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss the matter candidly because charges had yet to be officially filed.
Los Angeles police said Ortiz fired the shots from a parked car outside Rihanna’s home in the Post Office section of Beverly Hills. No one was injured, but bullets struck the singer’s home, an Airstream parked on the property and a neighbor’s house, according to one of the sources.
The singer was home at the time alongside her partner, A$AP Rocky, and their three children, according to the official. Rihanna and Rocky were in the Airstream at the time of the shooting, the official said.
“They easily could have been hit,” the official said.
Representatives for Rihanna and Rocky did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday morning.
During his weekly crime briefing Tuesday morning, Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell said a witness saw the suspect driving up and down the street outside Rihanna’s home in a white Tesla in the moments before the shooting. Officers later broadcast the vehicle’s description and a license plate reader captured the vehicle passing through Benedict Canyon, he said.
An LAPD helicopter began to track the vehicle, which was eventually pulled over in Sherman Oaks near Ventura and Sepulveda boulevards, according to McDonnell. Ortiz was arrested without incident and did not speak with to detectives. Police said they found an “AR-15-style” rifle, ammunition and a blonde wig in her car. Additional ammunition, including a 30-round magazine, was found in the vehicle’s trunk, the LAPD said.
A total of seven people were on the property at the time of the shooting, McDonnell said.
Ortiz is a licensed speech therapist with multiple prior arrests who had attacked Rihanna on social media in recent weeks. It was not clear who her attorney was and attempts to contact her have been unsuccessful as she has remained in LAPD custody since Sunday.
On Feb. 17, she posted a meme to Facebook falsely alleging Rihanna had AIDS. In another post six days later, she tagged Rihanna in a post demanding the singer “say something to me directly instead of sneaking around like you talking to me where I’m not at.”
Records show Ortiz has prior arrests in Florida for careless driving, domestic violence and battery. It was not clear if she was convicted of any crimes.
Police have not disclosed a motive in the attack. The case remains under investigation by the LAPD’s Robbery-Homicide Division.
L.A. County prosecutors will now find themselves on the same side of a courtroom as Rihanna and Rocky, a little over a year after the district attorney’s office tried to put the rapper in prison. Rocky — whose legal name is Rakim Meyers — faced 20 years in prison as prosecutors took him to trial on assault charges for allegedly shooting a former friend in Hollywood in 2021.
Rocky denied all wrongdoing and jumped into a courtroom gallery to hug Rihanna when he was acquitted last February.
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