Naya Rivera’s body may never be found in Lake Piru, California sergeant says

Naya Rivera’s body “may never come back up” in Lake Piru, Ventura County Sheriff’s Office Sgt. Kevin Donoghue said in a Thursday news conference.

“In this particular lake, in that area, there’s a lot of trees and plants and such that are under the water that can cause entanglements. It makes it unsafe for the divers and it makes it a more complicated search,” Donoghue said, according to Entertainment Tonight. “If the body is entangled in something beneath the water, it may never come back up. We don’t know.”

Rivera, 33, is presumed dead after a boat trip she took with her 4-year-old son, Josey Hollis Dorsey, on Wednesday, according to CNN. The search for her body resumed Friday, according to the publication.

“Those that are responsible for managing the overall search, they may get to a point in time where they’ve expelled every resource, they’ve searched every area, the probability of detection, of finding someone in a particular area, they’ve exhausted,” Donoghue said. “When we get to that point, that’s when they would probably have to suspend the search. But we’re not there yet.”

Rivera, who is best known for her role on “Glee” as Santana Lopez, rented a boat around 1 p.m., the Ventura County Star reported.

The boat was found adrift in the lake with her son alone and asleep hours later, according to CNN. He said that Rivera went into the lake to go swimming but never got back into the boat.

Rivera’s son was wearing a life jacket and another adult life jacket was found in the boat, according to KABC.

“The visibility is about one to two feet and then in some clearings it’s up to three to five,” diver Max O’Brien said, according to Entertainment Tonight. “There’s a lot of tree branches and overgrowth from when the lake was lower, so we’re digging through, breaking through sticks and searching a heavy brush bottom. Under the water, it’s a lot by feel.” Again, there’s a lot of shrubbery and sticks that we have to break through as we’re going through, so it’s kind of a Braille search.”

There isn’t evidence of foul play or suicide, sheriff’s office said, according to USA Today. Rivera has visited the lake in the past, authorities said.

Around 50 people were involved in the search on Wednesday night, which lasted for 5 hours, but was temporarily suspended when Rivera couldn’t be found and “due to zero visibility in the water and dangerous conditions for the divers,” the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release.

The search continued on Thursday and the “difficult conditions” have made the recovery a “very slow process,” the department said in the release.

More than 80 people, including ATVs and ground teams, searched for Rivera on Thursday, the department reported on Twitter.

Specialized dive teams from Los Angeles, San Luis Obispo, and Tulare also helped in the search, according to the department.

The sheriff’s department released security footage of Rivera renting the boat and the 911 call reporting Rivera as a missing person.

This story was originally published July 10, 2020 at 11:06 AM with the headline "Naya Rivera’s body may never be found in Lake Piru, California sergeant says."