Naya Rivera Death: Investigators Provide Update on Her Son After Body Discovery

It’s been over a week since Naya Rivera‘s tragic death, and investigators have now issued an update on her son, after his mother’s body was discovered on Monday. Captain Jeremy Paris, of the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office, spoke with ET about the case and stated that there is no way they could know certain specifics of Rivera’s final moments, but they do have a few things they feel strongly about in their speculation. One of those things is her last interactions with her 4-year-old son, Josey.

“We know that she was out with her 4-year-old boy and she was swimming,” Paris said. “We know he was wearing a life vest and she wasn’t. We know that she was able to, and she did assist him onto the boat. And then for some unknown reason, and I don’t think we will ever know, she was not able to get on the boat herself.” He then put an end to rumors that she was pulled under by a riptide of some kind. “There’s no whirlpools there, there’s no what we call riptides like you see at the ocean, that’s not what’s occurring,” he said. “It’s really just this wind-driven kind of surface action that we see there.”

Paris, who oversees the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office’s aviation and search and rescue units, also said, “There really are no riptides there. There are currents, wind-driven currents, that really affect the surface of the water. Pontoon boats ride really high on the water, so think of something sitting very high in the water, very susceptible to bobbing up and down. They also have a very wide side profile so when winds are picking up, they can really push that boat quickly. So, we have factors of wind with the boat being pushed away from a swimmer, we have wave action that can cause that boat to bob up and down making it difficult to get on and then we have underwater hazards that can, you know, snag feet underneath you, so that’s what I know kind of what the hazards are.”

The search and rescue captain later asserted that they have no reason to believe that Rivera was being reckless in any way. “We all take risks every day and, you know, it’s a risk that was taken and in this case, it turned out bad,” he said. “I mean, there’s parents every day taking their kids out. I know she had been to that lake a lot as a child and she wanted to give her kid the same experience … I think that’s a neat thing, a neat tradition she wanted to show her own son. I don’t think she’d been there in a while but as a child, she’d been there numerous times.”