Ivanna Ortiz loved taking her daughter to the movies. She was religious, preferring Christian musicians to secular ones, and she sang in the church choir. She worked as a speech pathologist and ran her own clinic.

“Everywhere she went, she always put a smile on your face,” said Jennifer Oxendine, who was friends with Ortiz in the late 2000s when they attended the same church. “She always just made you feel like a sense that everything’s going to be okay.”

Now, Ortiz, 36, stands accused of attempting the unthinkable.

In March, police say, Ortiz drove to the Los Angeles home of Rihanna, while the star and her partner, rapper A$AP Rocky, were in an Airstream trailer parked in the driveway. She grabbed a loaded AR-15 rifle and fired at least ten shots at the front gate, according to the police report obtained before it was sealed to the public.

When the noise of gunshots stopped, Rihanna told investigators, she opened a curtain to peek outside and saw two bullet holes in the glass, realizing she had been standing in the line of fire and had only been saved by the double-paned windshield. Nobody was injured.

In the six months since her arrest, Ortiz has been in custody in Los Angeles undergoing mental health evaluations to determine if she’s competent to stand trial on charges of attempted murder, assault with a semiautomatic weapon and shooting at an inhabited dwelling or camper.

The process has been delayed several times. Ortiz has pleaded not guilty and her lawyer, appointed by the Los Angeles County Public Defender’s Office, did not respond to requests for comment.

In interviews, former friends and relatives painted a picture of a woman whose mental health changed in recent years, after a bad car accident and as she grappled with losing custody of her daughter.

Their characterizations of Ortiz are supported by correspondence and legal filings within hundreds of pages of unearthed court documents and police records.

What is certain is that, in the months before the attack, Ortiz appeared to show a growing obsession with Rihanna.

A YouTube account appearing to belong to her posted over a hundred videos in which she read from a prayer journal and, in at least three videos, went on tangents about Rihanna, saying in one that she believed the singer wanted to “kill” her. The pop star’s “intrusive” spirit, she said in another video, was obsessed with her and had been stalking her.

In January, Ortiz sent an email to her ex-husband demanding he “renounce” the singer and “confess that I’m better than her,” court records show. “You gotta let me know so that door can be closed,” Ortiz wrote, according to a copy of the email.

The attack unfolded two months later.

When questioned at the police station, Ortiz only offered one fragment of insight, according to the police report: “I would like to say that I wasn’t attempting murder.”

Judging by the content on Ortiz’s Facebook and YouTube pages, and by the accounts of her friends, she didn’t appear to be a fan of Rihanna’s music — but she did talk about her a lot.

In one video posted in January, she called the Grammy winner “a witch” and in another, “the devil,” whose spirit was “trying to harass me for a few years now.”


She said Rihanna wanted to kill her, then threatened the singer. “Listen Rihanna, when you die, God is taking me to my future,” she said, seated in front of a refrigerator. “You want to kill me? Shut the f**k up.”

At some point, Ortiz made her way from Florida to California, telling Sangalang, according to his request for emergency custody of their daughter filed days after her arrest, that she was going out of town on a “‘work’ trip.”

On the morning of March 8, a woman driving a dirty white Tesla pulled up outside Rihanna’s home, according to one witness who spoke to police and was described in a police report as a chef who was reporting for her first day of work and parked outside the residence.

The witness recalled seeing the woman smirk at her “as if she was about to do something naughty.” Suddenly, she heard a series of “pops,” she told police, and saw a puff of white smoke come out from the passenger side of the Tesla.

Four bullets hit the trailer where A$AP Rocky was sleeping, according to the police report. Rihanna told police she had been near the front window seat when she heard sounds that resembled something hitting metal.

When the noises stopped, she opened the curtains and saw bullet holes in the windshield “directly in front of where she had been standing,” the report states. She grabbed A$AP Rocky out of bed and, he told police, she said, “They shooting at us.” They fled to the home through the garage to check on their children and staff, they told police.

At least six bullets hit the front gate of the home and one bullet hit the exterior wall of a room on the second floor of the home that police described as a “nursery room.”

The chef witness, according to the police report, saw the Tesla drive away. Ortiz, wearing a blonde wig, was arrested in the Sherman Oaks neighborhood of the San Fernando Valley without incident not long after, the report said, and a loaded AR-15 covered in a purple blanket was sitting on the passenger floorboard of the white mud-covered Tesla she was driving.

Neither Rihanna nor A$AP Rocky have publicly addressed the incident, and their representatives did not respond to requests for comment.

Rihanna told police she was in an Airstream trailer with A$AP Rocky in her home's driveway when she first heard shots ring out, several bullets of which hit the windshield of the trailer.

Rihanna told police she was in an Airstream trailer with A$AP Rocky in her home's driveway when she first heard shots ring out, several bullets of which hit the windshield of the trailer.

Ortiz faces up to life in state prison if convicted.