“I want my baby home,” Jen Harley wrote on her Instagram Story, and added a crying face emoji, just hours after her ex Ronnie Ortiz-Magro was arrested for domestic violence in Los Angeles on April 22. So, Jen — who lives in Las Vegas — set off on a road trip to pick up their three-year-old daughter, Ariana Sky Magro. In the very next slide on her Instagram Story, Jen posted a clip of herself driving and captioned it, “Last time I’m ever making this drive.”
Jen and Ronnie’s daughter was allegedly “in her father’s care at the time of his arrest,” a source told PEOPLE. However, Jen was able to successfully retrieve their daughter. In a follow-up slide on her Instagram Story, Jen shared a photo of herself cuddling with Ariana. “Can’t drive home like this but I’ll hold her as long as she needs it,” the realtor wrote over the mother-daughter duo. Later that Thursday, Jen posted a photo of a mama lion with her cub and wrote over it, “Me / My Daughter / Till the day I die.”
The following day, Jen shared another cryptic message on her Instagram Story. “We must accept the end of something in order to begin to build something new,” read a quote that Ronnie’s ex posted on April 23.
Just short of three weeks before his arrest, Ronnie posted a video tribute to Ariana on Instagram and captioned it, “My everything.” He also gave his daughter a lengthy shoutout for her third birthday on April 2, writing, “You are everything a father could ask for and more. I am beyond lucky to able to have your smile brighten up my life everyday. You will always be my little [angel face emoji] and I promise to make every Birthday better and better!”
This is the second time Ronnie has been arrested in connection to an alleged domestic violence incident within the past two years. The first time involved Jen in Oct. 2019. At the time, she and Ronnie had just gotten back together, but their night took a turn while staying together in a Airbnb rental home home in LA. It ended with the police tasering Ronnie and arresting him, and Page Six reported that the Jersey Shore star eventually pleaded not guilty to seven misdemeanors in Nov. 2019: domestic violence, child endangerment, brandishing a weapon, criminal threats, false imprisonment and two counts of resisting arrest.
Ronnie avoided jail time by pleading no contest to one count of domestic battery and one count of resisting arrest in May of 2020, per TMZ. He was given 36 months of probation instead, which meant that the MTV star was still on probation amid his latest arrest. In the wake of all this legal drama, we heard that Jen and Ronnie’s relationship also fell apart.
