Actress Naya Rivera is missing and presumed dead.
A search is underway for the former ‘Glee’ actress after her four-year-old son Josey was found alone on a boat on Lake Piru in California on Wednesday (08.07.20) afternoon.
According to TMZ, Josey whose father is Naya’s ex-husband Ryan Dorsey was asleep when he was found in the rented vessel by another boater and later told Ventura County Sherrif’s deputies that his mother had gone swimming in the water, but didn’t get back up.
Divers immediately started searching the lake, but had found no trace of the actress until the search was suspended at nightfall.
A Ventura County Sheriff’s Department confirmed they had deployed air and dive teams to “search for [a] possible drowning victim”.
Naya’s life jacket was still in the boat, and her purse was found inside her car, which was in the parking lot near the boat rental company.
Josey is said to be OK and is with family members. The search operation will resume at “first light” on Thursday (09.07.20).
Earlier this week, the 33-year-old star had shared a post on her social media accounts of her cuddling up to her son. It was captioned: “Just the two of us.”
Naya previously praised her “theatrical” son and predicted he’d follow in her footsteps one day. She said: “He’s theatrical in every way. He is definitely a little ham.”
And when Naya brought Josey to the set of ‘Step Up: High Water’, he was desperate to join her on camera. She said: “I was shooting and he was watching me in a scene and before we did the next take he goes, ‘I want to go to work with mommy! I want to go to work with you.’ I’m like, ‘You are at work with me!’ He goes, ‘no, in there,’ like in the scene.”
She began her career as a child actress and model, appearing in national television commercials before landing the role of Hillary Winston on the short-lived CBS sitcom The Royal Family at the age of 4 (1991–1992), for which she received a nomination for a Young Artist Award.
In 2015, Rivera portrayed the recurring role of Blanca Alvarez in the third season of Lifetime’s drama series Devious Maids. Rivera released a memoir titled Sorry Not Sorry: Dreams, Mistakes, and Growing Up in September 2016. In 2018, it was announced that she would be taking the role of school administrator Collette Jones in the YouTube Red series Step Up: High Water.
