The sweetest bond. Naya Rivera posted a close-up selfie with her 4-year-old son, Josey, one day before the Glee alum was reported missing.
“Just the two of us,” the actress, 33, captioned a Tuesday, July 7, Instagram photo of herself kissing her little one.
“Praying for you and your family,” entertainer Todrick Hall commented on the social media upload, while Jersey Shore star Angelina Pivarnick wrote, “Praying they find you.”
When the California native was 30 minutes overdue on returning her rented motorized pontoon boat at Lake Piru near Los Angeles on Wednesday, July 8, personnel searched for the craft and found Josey sleeping inside, alone, the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department told Us Weekly in a statement. While Rivera’s son was found wearing a life vest, “another vest [was found] on board the boat for an adult, so it looks like [Rivera] was not wearing” hers.
“It is believed that Naya and her son were swimming in the lake near the boat and as they were getting back into the boat, her son made it into the boat and Naya went under water and did not resurface,” the department told Us. Captain Eric Buschow went on to say “all indications point” to the singer being dead, explaining, “The fact that she was seen in the water shows there is a high likelihood that she drowned.”
Drone teams, a sheriff’s boat and a dive team conducted a search for the Grammy nominee from 4:38 p.m. to 10 p.m., which “was terminated … due to darkness.” The search is set to resume at 6:30 a.m. on Thursday, July 9, with “additional divers and sonar equipment.”
Rivera welcomed Josey in 2015 with her then-husband, Ryan Dorsey. The former couple were married from 2014 to 2018.
In November 2019, the Sorry Not Sorry author exclusively told Us that her son said he wanted to be on TV after watching Glee for the first time. (His mom played Santana Lopez in the Fox show.)
Josey “definitely” has talent, Rivera gushed to Us at the time. “He loves to sing, he loves music, he loves to dance and he’s really, really funny.”
