On March 8, 2026, around one in the afternoon, Rihanna and her partner, A$AP Rocky, were inside the caravan parked in the garden of their mansion in Beverly Hills. He was sleeping when, suddenly, the 38-year-old singer and entrepreneur from Barbados heard 10 loud noises. It was “like something hitting metal,” she later told the police. When she opened the caravan curtains to check what it was, she saw bullet holes in the windshield. “They’re shooting at us!” she warned the rapper, whom she had to wake up and throw to the ground. This is recorded, at least, in the police documents filed in the Los Angeles courts — and accessed by The New York Times — which have served as evidence in a new hearing of the main accused, which took place this Wednesday, May 13.
Rihanna — who was not present at the hearing — details in the official documents that she experienced moments of anguish when she understood the seriousness of what was happening. When the police questioned her moments after the shooting, the pop star told authorities that after pushing A$AP Rocky to the ground, they both ran to the house and warned everyone about the shots. The couple’s three children: RZA, three years old; Riot, two; and Rocki, six months, were inside the mansion at the time of the shooting, as well as Rihanna’s mother, a nanny, and a housekeeper. No one was injured.
The alleged attacker, Ivanna Ortiz, 35 years old and a resident of Florida, was arrested in a neighborhood near the singer’s residence after fleeing the scene. At the time of her arrest, an AR-15 type rifle and two 30-round magazines were found on her. According to authorities, she fired at least 20 times with it at Rihanna’s house and a neighbor’s house, where two people were present. The detainee, who was present at this Wednesday’s hearing — wearing an orange prison jumpsuit, as she remains in custody — where she pleaded not guilty again, faces more than a dozen charges of attempted murder.
Ortiz’s appointed public defender tried to convince the judge that his client was mentally incapacitated to face trial. However, the judge disagreed and stated that there was no evidence of incapacity, so another hearing has been scheduled for May 19.
In its report, the police state that Ortiz was wearing a blonde wig when arrested and that she invoked her rights at the police station. Still, she made a comment to two detectives before remaining silent: “Can I say one sentence? I would like to say that I was not trying to commit murder. But that’s all I wanted to say.”
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Prosecutors say nearly 10 bullets struck the property while the couple’s three kids and Rihanna’s mother were inside the main house. The accused — Ivanna Lisette Ortiz — has since been charged with attempted murder and multiple felony gun charges. pic.twitter.com/GFtolF3Wet
— TMZ (@TMZ) May 13, 2026
When the police questioned Rihanna, she said she had sometimes had to deal with stalkers and death threats on social media, but she did not recall any recent incident that could be related to the shooting. In 2018, she faced a similar case when a 27-year-old man broke into her Hollywood Hills residence. The intruder, identified as Eduardo León, sneaked onto the property while the singer was absent and camped in the house for about 12 hours before being discovered by one of her assistants. He later pleaded not guilty to the charge of harassment and received a 10-year restraining order prohibiting him from approaching the artist.
After the shooting, the police also interviewed several witnesses, including a chef for Rihanna who had just parked in front of the house because it was her first day of work. According to the documents filed in court, the witness said she had seen a Tesla — the vehicle in which Ortiz was arrested — driven by a woman who “seemed to be smiling as if she was about to do something inappropriate.” According to the report, the chef found it strange but dismissed it and went back to watching videos on TikTok inside her car. Then she heard a series of loud bangs and, when she looked up, saw the Tesla driving away. “Smoke was coming out from the gunshots through one of the car windows,” she told the police.
