Naya Rivera’s Son Recalls Her Last Words & ‘Trying to Find a Life Raft’ Before She Drowned

Alyssa Norwin February 12, 2025, 11:35 am

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Actress Naya Rivera poses for a portrait session at the 2013 Giffoni Film Festival — Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images

Nearly five years after Naya Rivera‘s July 2020 death, her ex-husband, Ryan Dorsey, is speaking out about what their son, Josey, remembers from the day she died. Josey, who was 4 years old at the time, was with his mom when she drowned in California’s Lake Piru.

Now 9, Josey recalls being worried about getting off the pontoon and going swimming that day, but Naya calmed his fears by telling him, “Don’t be silly!” Dorsey tells People that his son remembers more details as time goes on, including that his mom told him to swim back toward the pontoon when it started drifting, and that he grabbed “the tanks” and pulled himself “around the boat” to get back on.

“He said that the last thing she said was his name and then she went under and he didn’t see her anymore,” Dorsey reveals. “It just rocks my world that he had to witness her last moments.” An incident report said that Rivera drowned after helping her son get back aboard the boat and that she yelled, “Help!” before disappearing underwater.

Naya Rivera and Josey Hollis attend the premiere of Warner Bros. Pictures'

Gregg DeGuire/Getty Images

“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 adds. “I keep reassuring him, ‘Buddy, that rope wasn’t going to be long enough.’ That obviously still sticks out in his head because he feels like he could have saved her. I think she just got caught up in a brush. That or a weird undercurrent from the dam. It was just a freak occurrence.”

Although Dorsey and Rivera finalized their divorce two years before her death, he says they were still “back and forth” about being a couple. “We were going to try to have another baby and all the things,” he admits. “We went to Maui to look at places and get a fresh start, and then we fell out again. If I knew what I know now, I would’ve tried to do things differently to make it work.”

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Regardless of where they stood, they made sure to put their son first. “He had a good schedule,” Dorsey says. “If one of us couldn’t do it, we always would fill in. We never had any real turmoil about raising him together. We were very good co-parents.”