Naya Rivera’s ex-husband Ryan Dorsey has revealed new details about how their young son tried to save the “Glee” star just before she drowned in Southern California.
The “Big Sky” and “Justified” actor, 41, told People in an interview published Wednesday that 9-year-old Josey — who was 4 at the time of the tragedy — still blames himself for his mother’s drowning on July 8, 2020.
“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 says in this week’s issue.
Rivera and her little boy were enjoying a swim in Ventura County’s Lake Piru that day when she told Josey to swim back to the pontoon boat they’d rented. The vessel lacked an anchor and floatation devices and had drifted from them while they were in the water.
“He said that the last thing she said was his name, and then she went under,” said Dorsey.
Rivera wore herself out trying to get Josey back on board, according to an incident report at the time. An autopsy completed two months after a five-day search for her body ruled Rivera’s death an accidental drowning. She was 33.
“It just rocks my world that he had to witness her last moments,” said Dorsey, who said the loss remains “so surreal every day.”
Though Josey is a “such a happy kid,” Dorsey said he sometimes struggles in what to say to Josey about his mom.
“It’s hard to explain things that you can’t really make sense of no matter what age you are,” he said. “I’m not a big believer in everything happens for a reason because I can’t ever think of a reason why he doesn’t have his mom.”