Naya Rivera missing and presumed dead after 4-year-old son found alone on boat in California lake
Glee star Naya Rivera is presumed dead after her 4-year-old son, Josey, was found alone on the boat they’d rented. According to multiple reports, the actress rented a pontoon at Lake Piru in Ventura County, Calif., on Wednesday and spent the day swimming with her son. When she was late returning the boat, staff at the lake went searching for them and found the 4-year-old alone on the pontoon. The Ventura County Sheriff’s Department posted a tweet just after 10:30 p.m. local time Wednesday reading, “The missing person at Lake Puru [sic] has been identified as Naya Rivera, 33, of Los Angeles. [Search and rescue] operation will continue at first light.”
[Update: At 5:45 a.m. local time Thursday morning, the VCSD account posted a tweet stating, “The search for Naya Rivera will continue this morning at Lake Piru. The lake will be closed to the public while search operations continue. Dive teams from throughout the region will be assisting us through mutual aid.” At 10:27 a.m. local time, the VCSD tweeted again: “Multiple teams of professional search & rescue personnel are actively searching Lake Piru for clues to the location of Naya Rivera. With over 80 people involved in the search right now, we are using helicopters, boats, ATV vehicles, and ground personnel to try and locate her.”
At a press conference later on Thursday, VCSD officer Chris Deyer said, “there’s no signs of foul play, no signs of anything that went wrong besides a tragic accident,” according to The Washington Post. “Switching that mode to a search-and-recovery mode, like I said, does not change the efforts and does not change the gusto, what we push forward with the search operation. The goal is still to bring Ms. Rivera home to her family, so they can have some closure.”