Make wishtv.com your home page

Sheriff: ‘Glee’ star Naya Rivera saved son before drowning

Naya Rivera (Photo Courtesy/Getty Images)

LOS ANGELES (AP) — “Glee” star Naya Rivera
’s 4-year-old son told investigators that his mother, whose body was
found in a Southern California lake Monday, boosted him back on to the
deck of their rented boat before he looked back and saw her disappearing
under the water, authorities said.

“She must have mustered
enough energy to get her son back on the boat, but not enough to save
herself,” Ventura County Sheriff Bill Ayub said at a news conference.

The
boy, Josey Hollis Dorsey, was found asleep and alone in a life vest on
the drifting pontoon boat about three hours after they launched on Lake
Piru northwest of Los Angeles, setting off a five-day search that ended
with the discovery of the body of the 33-year-old floating near the
surface early Monday, authorities said.

The mother and son had gone swimming, which was permitted in that part of the lake, Ayub said. She was not wearing a life vest.

Authorities
believe that Rivera drowned accidentally, and that her body was most
likely trapped in the vegetation under the lake for several days before
floating to the top, Ayub said.

Divers had already thoroughly
searched the area where she was eventually found, but shrubbery that had
grown wildly in the area, which was recently dry, must have kept her
hidden in the murky water.

Family members chatted with Rivera via
FaceTime when she was on the boat, and search crews watched those
videos for clues to where she might have gone down, Ayub said.

“It has been an extremely difficult time for her family throughout this ordeal,” Ayub said “We share in their grief.”

Rivera played singing cheerleader Santana Lopez for six seasons from 2009 to 2015 on the Fox musical-comedy “Glee.”

She is the third major cast member from the show to die in their 30s.

The
announcement of her death comes seven years to the day after co-star
Cory Monteith died at 31 from a toxic mix of alcohol and heroin, with
the series losing one of its leads while it was still on the air.

Another
co-star, Mark Salling, who Rivera dated at one point, killed himself in
2018 at age 35 after pleading guilty to child pornography charges.

Rivera’s
body was flown by helicopter 40 miles (64 kilometres) to the coroner’s
office in Ventura, where an autopsy would be conducted and an official
identification made, authorities said.

Ayub said the circumstances
from the location of the body to the fact that no one else has been
reported missing in the lake makes the department “confident that the
body we found is Naya Rivera.”

Rivera had experience boating on the lake in Los Padres National Forest an hour’s drive from Los Angeles.

It
was closed down and searched by dozens of divers with help from sonar
and robotic devices combing the bottom and helicopters and drones
searching above.

Surveillance video showed the mother and son parking and renting the boat at about 1 p.m. on July 8.

The
vendor who rented it to them went looking for them when they failed to
return on time, and found the boat drifting in the northern end of the
lake with the boy aboard.

The boy, Rivera’s son from her marriage
to actor Ryan Dorsey, was safe and healthy and quickly reunited with
family members after he was found, authorities said.

His parents divorced in 2018 after nearly four years of marriage.

The day before her death, Rivera tweeted a photo of herself and Josey that read, “just the two of us.”

Naya Rivera (Photo Courtesy/Getty Images)