George Rivera, the father of late Glee star Naya Rivera, has revealed the tragic details of his last FaceTime call with his daughter, just hours before his grandson, Josey was found alone and Naya was reported missing. Five days later, Naya’s body would be found floating in a remote section of Lake Piru; she had drowned while trying to save her son from the same fate.
On the afternoon of July 8th, 2020, Naya rented a boat when she decided to call her dad to ask about swimming in the lake. George talked about this in conversation recently in a new interview with People, revealing, "She would always bounce stuff off me. And she wanted to go swimming with Josey out in the middle of the lake." Naya then informed her father that the rented boat had no anchor, "I could see that the wind was blowing and my stomach was just cringing."
Father Reveals Details Of Last FaceTime Call">Gregg DeGuire/Getty Images
George is an avid boater and when he heard about the boat being anchorless and saw it was windy, he told his daughter not to go swimming. "I kept telling her, 'Don't get out of the boat! Don't get out of the boat! It will drift away when you're in the water," however, after about three minutes the call cut out.
"It was just heartbreaking," added George, "I had this bad feeling that was just killing me.”Rivera was left staring at a screencap he had taken of his daughter in sunglasses and a baseball cap along with the boat's canopy in the background and the blue sky behind it. "It's still pretty much a big blur of pain almost a year later," he continued, "Things are slowly coming a little more into focus, but I don't know if I'll ever find closure from this. I miss her every day."