Naya Rivera sent a photo of her four-year-old son Josey to a family member 90 minutes before he was found on their pontoon boat that shows the cove they’d sailed to
A body has been recovered in the search for missing Glee actress Naya Rivera who vanished on a California lake and was feared to have drowned six days ago.
Authorities are yet to formally confirm that the body is that of the 33-year-old. They announced the grim discovery on Twitter, saying: ‘A body has been found at Lake Piru this morning.
‘The recovery is in progress.’
Rivera vanished on Wednesday on Lake Piru after taking a pontoon boat out on the water with her four-year-old son Josey.
Josey was later found alone, sleeping on the boat, by another group who noticed it drifting.
Search and rescue teams have spent the last six days combing the lake for traces of the actress but struggled against poor visibility and the sheer size of the lake.
On Monday, they honed in on a cove where the actress had taken a photograph of Josey and sent it to a relative 90 minutes before he was found on the boat.
They focused their search on that cove on Monday.
The actress grew up 20 miles from the lake and was familiar with it, police sources said last week.
She thought of it as her ‘sanctuary’, despite it being known for rip currents and icy waters that can overpower swimmers.
A press conference about Monday’s discovery has been scheduled for 2pm local time.
On Sunday, Naya’s distraught family were seen at the lake trying to assist investigators in their search for her.
Josey told police that his mother ‘jumped in’ and never came back up to the surface.
Authorities carry the body from a boat on Monday morning to be taken for formal identification
The body was brought in from the lake by boat early on Monday morning. Authorities concealed it beneath orange tarp
The body is now being stored in one of the structures near to where Rivera parked her jeep on Wednesday
Divers on Sunday searching for Naya Rivera on Sunday
The Ventura County Sheriff’s Office released CCTV footage showing Naya Rivera and her four-year-old son arriving at the dock on Lake Piru on Wednesday
The pair climbed onto their pontoon boat rental before heading out into the lake at around 1pm
Naya Rivera’s father George Rivera sat alongside his former son-in-law, Jose’s father Ryan Dorsey, on Sunday as search teams continued to look for her
This diagram shows where Naya Rivera and her son rented a boat on Lake Piru before the four-year-old was seen alone. The map in the top left shows the location of the lake in relation to Los Angeles where Rivera lives
He was wearing a life jacket but the actress’s was on the pontoon when it was recovered.
‘There was a picture sent to a family member that showed the boy on the boat by a cove. We found where that cove was,’ Robert Inglis of the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office Search & Rescue Team told Us Weekly.
He previously said: ‘What I suspect is that the winds kicked up.
‘Those pontoon boats are very light, and when you push them, it can get away from you. She might’ve tried to swim after the boat. But that’s all speculation. Once we do locate her, that’ll answer a lot more questions.’
Police have not shared the image and it’s unclear which cove it was taken in. Over the weekend, they asked members of the public not to go looking for the star themselves in the dangerous water.
The actress’s father George on Sunday appeared to help co-ordinate the hunt for his missing daughter after police confirmed ‘nothing came’ of their search of cabins along Lake Piru.
On Sunday, the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office had announced that cabins on the banks of the lake would be searched after social media users theorized that Rivera could have ended up in one.
But Sgt. Shannon King later told People: ‘They’re not occupied. Nothing came of it. There’s no evidence to say she left the water. It appears to be 100 percent just a tragic drowning.’
The lake itself is 1,200 acres and can reach depths of up to 130 feet.
In it, authorities point to a barely visible tree limb highlighting the challenges divers are facing in trying to find the missing mother-of-one.
With almost zero visibility, human divers are resorting to searching by feel, meaning it could take several days before crews can locate her body, Eric Buschow, Ventura County Sheriff’s Office spokesman, said at a press conference Friday evening.
‘We don’t know if she’s going to be found five minutes from now or five days from now, so we’re still going to be continuing this effort,’ he said. ‘The visibility in the water is one to two feet,’ Buschow added.