GONE MISSING
Actress Naya Rivera goes missing while out on the water with her 4-year-old son, Josey
Glee actress Naya Rivera shockingly disappears after renting a boat with family in Southern California.
The previous day, Naya Riviera had taken to Instagram to post a sweet picture of herself and her 4-year-old son, Josey Dorsey, which she’d captioned, “Just the two of us.” And when she rented a pontoon boat on July 8 at California’s scenic Lake Piru, the little boy in tow, Naya, 33, seemed happy to make good on those words.
But sadly, she never brought the boat back. At 4 p.m., Josey was found asleep on the adrift craft, his mother nowhere in sight. According to published reports, the child told rescuers that he had been swimming with Naya, but that she never returned to the boat. “We were notified and the search began,” Ventura County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Capt. Eric Buschow tells Life & Style. “Helicopters immediately flew out with the dive team and put divers in the water where she was last seen.” Yet while authorities closed the Ventura County reservoir for the extensive search, which continued until 10 p.m. and resumed early the following day, Naya still hadn’t been found 24 hours later. “It ’s a total shock and I feel for her family and her kid right now,” the actress’ former publicist, Zack Teperman, tells Life & Style. “I’m in disbelief.”
SAFETY FEARS
He isn’t alone. By the afternoon of July 9, social media was full of posts from worried friends and castmates of the Glee alum, including Demi Lovato, who pleaded, “Please pray for @nayarivera to be found safe and sound,” and Heather Morris, who wrote, “We need all the prayers we can get to bring our Naya back home to us. We need your love and light.”
Lake Piru, which is 160 feet deep and notorious for its rip currents and waves, has been the site of several drownings. And while Josey was wearing a life jacket during the family excursion, Naya’s appeared to have been left behind on the boat. “This is such tragic news,” her LA neighbor Kenneth Purcell tells Life & Style. “It’s tragic for her son.”
Indeed, though Naya has had a tumultuous past — including messy public breakups from rapper Big Sean and exhusband Ryan Dorsey,
as well as a domestic violence charge (which was eventually dismissed) — she’d seemed determined to put the bad times be
good, of late. “Make the most of today and every day you are given,” she posted on Instagram one week before her doomed boat ride. “Tomorrow is not promised.”