One year on from Naya Rivera’s tragic death, her family has opened up about the “absolute hell” of waiting for the Glee star’s body to be recovered.
Rivera’s mother and sister reflected on the heartwrenching day they waited for news on the actor’s body after she drowned Lake Piru in Southern California one year ago.
Naya Rivera and her four-year-old son rented a boat to take onto Lake Piru in Southern California. Following the rental becoming overdue, a search by fellow boaters found her child alone and asleep on the boat, with Rivera missing.
Yolanda Previtire said on Good Morning America that her daughter had FaceTimed her from the rented pontoon boat she and her son, Josey Dorsey, were on in Lake Piru on July 8, 2020.
“I missed two of her FaceTime calls, and I called her back,” Previtire recalled.
“I said, ‘Naya, Where are you?'” She said Naya explained she wanted to take Josey fishing. “We had a beautiful conversation. The sun was kissing her face and she was just beautiful. She had a white, beautiful swimming suit on and she was glowing.”
She then told her daughter, “The water’s getting choppy,” and told Naya to move the boat to an area where the water may be “a little bit calmer.”
After telling her daughter to call her when she left the lake, Previtire said that later in the day, two detectives came to her door to tell her that while Josey was safe, Naya was missing.
“It was almost like a force,” she said of the shocking news. “I don’t know what it was, but I literally was just pushed backwards. I just ran backwards, if you can imagine, just screaming and I ended up in the bathroom. I slammed the door, I was on the floor.”
Rivera’s sister Nickayla said the five days that followed, as search teams combed the lake were “absolute hell.”
Nickayla also spoke out on her choice to move in with her sister’s former husband and father of Josey, Ryan Dorsey.
“I’m very grateful to be able to help him transition into whatever he’s going to be next,” said the model. “I knew right when it happened, right when we got him, I knew the role that I had to take. That was a big change, and something that I had to get used to too.”
After interviewing Josey following Naya’s body being recovered, Captain Eric Buschow of the police noted that her son stated that they had gone swimming, and when he returned to the boat, his mother didn’t follow.
“He’s in good health,” Bushow said of Rivera’s son. “The family is going through a very traumatic time right now.”
Buschow later told NBC LA: “This is considered to be a horrible accident.”
Following days of extensive searching, the body of Naya Rivera was found, marking her death at the young age of 33.
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