The Florida woman who allegedly opened fire with a rifle at Rihanna’s West L.A. home earlier this year may be mentally unfit to stand trial, her lawyer said in court on Wednesday.
Deputy Public Defender Derek Dillman “expressed doubt” that his client, 35-year-old speech pathologist Ivana Ortiz, was able to stand trial on charges of attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon after allegedly opening fire at the singer’s Beverly Crest property on March 8.
But after a brief closed-door hearing, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Shannon Cooley found there was not enough evidence of Ortiz’s mental “incompetence” and ordered the criminal proceedings to continue.
A spokesperson for the public defender’s office declined to comment outside the courtroom, noting that Cooley had sealed any discussion about Ortiz’s mental health. Dillman did not provide specifics about his concerns during the portions of the hearing open to the public.
Prosecutors say the bullets fired by Ortiz hit Rihanna’s home, a neighbor’s home and an Airstream parked in the grounds. No one was hurt, but Rihanna and her husband – hip-hop and actor ASAP Rocky – were inside the Airstream when it was shot.
Ortiz has pleaded not guilty.
Earlier on Wednesday, Ortiz sought to fire Dillman as his attorney during a closed-door hearing before Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Shannon Cooley, who presumably blocked that effort because Dillman was still representing Ortiz on Wednesday morning.
Ortiz continued to spar with Dillman later in the day when he tried to schedule a future hearing in the case for July and demanded she “do it sooner.”
After Dillman expressed concern about his client’s mental health, Cooley vacated the courtroom so he could question the attorney for evidence of Ortiz’s alleged mental illness. Typically, when a defense attorney raises questions about his client’s mental fitness, judges send such cases to the mental health court in Hollywood. LA County Subdist. Atty. Alexander Bott, who is defending the case, said that he had never seen anything like what happened on Wednesday.
According to a police report filed in court in late March, on the day of the shooting, Rihanna said Rocky was sleeping when she “suddenly heard about ten loud sounds like something hitting metal”.
According to the police report, when the firing stopped, he “picked up Rocky from the bed, told him they were being shot at and pushed them both to the ground”. The police report states that the couple then ran towards their home to see their children.
Deputy Public Defender Derek Dillman addresses the court during the arraignment for Ivanna Ortiz at the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center on April 8, 2026.
(Kelo Seals/Getty Images/Pool)
Ortiz had made several derogatory posts about Rihanna on social media in the weeks before the shooting.
When police arrested him 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. According to court records, he legally owned the firearm.
While Ortiz declined to answer specific questions from police after his arrest, he did give a brief statement to investigators.
“Can I say a sentence?” he asked, according to the report. “I would like to say that I was not attempting murder. But that’s all I wanted to say.”
