The Florida woman who allegedly raked Rihanna’s West L.A. home with rifle fire earlier this year may be mentally unfit to stand trial, her attorney said in court Wednesday.
Deputy Public Defender Derek Dillman “expressed a doubt” that his client, 35-year-old speech pathologist Ivanna Ortiz, was competent to stand trial on charges of attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon after she allegedly opened fire on the singer’s Bevelry Crest property on March 8.
But after a brief closed-door hearing, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Shannon Cooley did not find there was substantial evidence of Ortiz’s mental “incompetence” and ordered criminal proceedings to continue.
A spokeswoman for the public defender’s office declined to comment outside the courtroom, noting Cooley had sealed any discussion of Ortiz’s mental health. Dillman did not offer specifics about his concerns during the portions of the hearing open to the public.
Prosecutors say the shots fired by Ortiz struck Rihanna’s home, a neighbor’s residence and an Airstream parked on the grounds. No one was hit, but Rihanna and her husband — hip-hop and actor ASAP Rocky — were inside the Airstream at the time it was shot.
Ortiz has pleaded not guilty.
Earlier on Wednesday, Ortiz sought to have Dillman fired as her attorney during a closed-door hearing before Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Shannon Cooley, who presumably blocked that attempt as Dillman was still representing Ortiz late Wednesday morning.
Ortiz continued to bicker with Dillman later in the day when he tried to schedule a future hearing in the case for July, demanding he “do it sooner.”
After Dillman expressed concern about his client’s mental health, Cooley cleared the courtroom so she could question the attorney for evidence of Ortiz’s purported mental illness. Typically, when a defense attorney raises questions about their client’s mental fitness, judges refer such cases to the mental health court in Hollywood. L.A. County Deputy Dist. Atty. Alexander Bott, who is prosecuting the case, said he had never seen anything like what happened on Wednesday.
On the day of the shooting, Rihanna said Rocky was sleeping when she “suddenly heard approximately ten loud sounds like something banging on metal,” according to a police report made public in a court filing in late March.
When the shooting stopped, she grabbed Rocky “out of bed, told him they were being shot at and pushed both of them to the ground,” according to the police report. The couple then ran to their house to check on their children, the police report said.
Ortiz had made a number of disparaging posts about Rihanna on social media in the weeks leading up to the shooting.
When police arrested her in Sherman Oaks an hour after the shooting, Ortiz was carrying a black Springfield Armory rifle and two 30-round rifle magazines, according to the police report. She legally owned the firearm, according to court records.
While Ortiz declined to answer specific questions from police after her arrest, she did make a brief statement to investigators.
“Can I say one sentence?” she asked, according to the report. “I would like to say that I wasn’t attempting murder. But that’s all I wanted to say.”
