SPEAKING OUT

Naya Rivera’s Son Tried to Save His Mom From Drowning

The “Glee” star’s ex-husband said that their young son revealed her last words before she disappeared under the water.

Naya Rivera’s ex-husband Ryan Dorsey shared a heartbreaking new detail about the Glee star’s death that was caused by accidental drowning on July 8, 2020, People reported.

Rivera and her son Josey, who was four-years-old at the time, were swimming off a rental boat at Lake Piru in Ventura County, California, when the boat drifted, initiating a ripple effect that ended her life at age 33.

Josey, who watched his mother drown, tried to save her, Dorsey revealed but was held back from doing so, something that the now nine-year-old still blames himself for.

“Something he’s said over and over is that he was trying to find a life raft, and there was a rope, but there was a big spider on the rope, and he was too scared to throw it,” Dorsey, 41, told People. “I keep reassuring him, ‘Buddy, that rope wasn’t going to be long enough.’”

The couple’s son still remembers moments from that day in July, like how it was a windy day, and he was worried about getting into the water. “Don’t be silly!” he remembers Rivera telling him.

When mother and son were out swimming that day, Rivera noticed their boat, which wasn’t equipped with an anchor or flotation device, drifting away. Dorsey would later use these points in the wrongful death lawsuit he filed on behalf of their son against Ventura County in 2022.

The Glee star told her son to swim back, and Josey recalls grabbing “the tanks” to pull himself “around the boat,” Dorsey said. According to incident reports, Rivera died from exhaustion after she helped Josey get to the boat and back on it.

“He said that the last thing she said was his name, and then she went under, and he didn’t see her anymore,” Dorsey said. ”It just rocks my world that he had to witness her last moments.”

Dorsey was in Big Bear Lake grabbing food for a friend’s birthday barbecue when he heard the news from Rivera’s stepfather. He dropped everything and rushed to his son, who was 145 miles away and found asleep and alone on the adrift boat that Rivera had rented three hours earlier that day. Rivera’s body was found five days later in a remote part of the lake.

Dorsey, who moved from L.A. to his home state of West Virginia, admitted that the holidays are still difficult on him and his son.

“We made this book of memories for Josey that sits by his bed, and during the holidays, he was crying looking at it,” Dorsey said. “You can only give him a hug and tell him, ‘I know, life is not fair. Bad things happen, and there’s no reason for it, and you just have to do your best to be a good person.’”

“It’s hard trying to explain things that you can’t really make sense of no matter what age you are,” he continued. “I’m not a big believer in everything happening for a reason because I can’t ever think of a reason why he doesn’t have his mom.”