“Why are we doing this?” That was the question Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Maria Cavalluzzi put to prosecutors on Tuesday, moments after ruling that the woman accused of shooting at Rihanna’s home is fit to face trial.
Deputy District Attorney Alexander Bott wouldn’t say, telling the court only that “they will be informed tomorrow.”
The defendant is Ivanna Ortiz, 36, who appeared in a yellow jail uniform and handcuffs. Cavalluzzi said she had received a Sept. 23, 2026 report from Dr. Phani Tumu, and neither Bott nor Deputy Public Defender Derek Dillman contested its findings.
Based on the evidence, the court finds the defendant is presently competent to stand trial,” the judge said, as Ortiz appeared to be smiling at times. “Criminal proceedings are reinstated.”
Instead of sending the case back to the downtown courtroom that handles felony probable cause hearings, Bott asked that the parties go before the supervising judge of criminal operations.
That department is sometimes the first stop for cases involving grand jury indictments, which stay secret until they’re unsealed at arraignment. It wasn’t immediately clear if Ortiz was headed for one on Wednesday.
Before her referral to mental health court, Ortiz pleaded not guilty to one count of attempted murder, 10 counts of assault with a semiautomatic firearm and three counts of shooting at an inhabited dwelling.
Prosecutors say she drove to the property on March 8 and fired 20 rounds from an AR-15-style rifle while Rihanna, A$AP Rocky, their three young children and Rihanna’s mother were there.
A police report obtained by Rolling Stone places the couple inside an Airstream trailer parked outside, where Rihanna heard “approximately ten loud sounds like something banging on metal.”
She opened the curtains, saw bullet holes in the windshield directly in front of where she’d been standing, and “grabbed Rakim out of bed,” the report said.
“They shooting at us,” she warned as she pulled Rocky, legally Rakim Mayers, to the floor. The pair then ran into the garage and moved quickly to secure their kids and staff, police said.
Bott has framed the shooting as anything but random. “This was calculated conduct,” he told the court earlier, pointing to a loaded rifle, ammunition and a wig he called a disguise, and warning it “could easily have resulted in multiple homicides.”
Investigators found six bullet holes in the vehicle gate, a seventh in a pedestrian gate and three more in a wooden fence hidden behind tall hedges. One round allegedly struck an exterior wall of a nursery.
Witnesses described a white Tesla Model 3 with a paper plate fleeing the area, and a police helicopter tracked it down quickly.
Ortiz’s online history has drawn attention too, including a Jan. 4 YouTube video titled “Praying Woman’s Journal, Day 39” in which she addressed the singer directly: “Listen, Rihanna. When you die, God is taking me to my future.”
Ortiz worked as a licensed speech pathologist in California before the alleged attack. The state’s Board of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology asked the court to bar her from practicing through sentencing and any appeal, and a different judge granted the request.
Whatever prosecutors have lined up for Wednesday, the next move is already happening behind closed doors.
