Who is Ivanna Ortiz? Background of the woman arrested for shooting at Rihanna's house

Dubai: A shooting at Rihanna's Los Angeles home on Sunday afternoon has sent shockwaves through the entertainment world. The suspect has now been identified, arrested, and charged, and her background is raising a lot of questions.

What happened

At around 1.15pm on Sunday, shots were fired at Rihanna's property in the Beverly Crest area, just north of Beverly Hills. Police say the suspect drove up to the entrance of the home and opened fire with an AR-15-style rifle, with approximately ten rounds fired at the property. Photographs from the scene show bullet marks on the front gate.

Rihanna was inside the home at the time, along with her partner A$AP Rocky and their three young children. Fortunately, no one was injured.

Officers tracked a vehicle matching the description seen at the property to the Sherman Oaks Galleria shopping centre, a few miles from the home, and made an arrest less than an hour after the shooting. The suspect was taken into custody at 2.20pm and booked into Los Angeles County jail in the early hours of Monday morning.

Who is she

The Los Angeles Police Department identified the suspect as Ivanna Lisette Ortiz, a 35-year-old woman originally from Illinois who is believed to have been living in Florida.

"Ivanna Ortiz, 35, has been booked for attempted murder in connection to the shooting at Rihanna's Los Angeles home Sunday," an LAPD spokesperson confirmed to Newsweek.

Her bail has been set at 10.225 million dollars, reflecting the severity of the charges against her.

According to state records, a woman of the same name is a licensed speech-language pathologist in Florida, with a licence that was issued in 2015 and remains active until December 2027. Her social media accounts, which have since surfaced online, describe an Illinois native working as a speech therapist in Florida.

A troubled history

Old mugshots of Ortiz had already circulated online before the LAPD made her identity public, confirming that she had prior encounters with law enforcement.

Court records from Florida detail a violent incident in June 2023 involving her former husband. During a child drop-off at her apartment, the situation turned physical. According to an arrest affidavit, Ortiz had sent her ex-husband a threatening text message ahead of the encounter, and cellphone footage from the scene captured the confrontation, which also involved the use of abusive language.

Ortiz remains in custody as the case moves forward.