The Glee star is missing and presumed by authorities to have drowned.
As hopes for finding Naya Rivera alive dwindle, many are left to wonder how she could have gotten into difficulty on such a placid lake.
But, if the worst fears presented by authorities are true, the “Glee” star would not be the first life claimed by California’s beautiful Lake Piru; in 2010 a man drowned right in front of eight of his friends, having also jumped off a pontoon boat for a swim.
On May 22 of that year, a party of nine friends, celebrating their graduation from nursing school, rented out a pontoon boat, similar to the one Naya and her son did on Wednesday before she went missing.
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After motoring to Pump House Point, three of the friends decided to go for a swim. Two of them put on life vests; one of them — Roberto Barrios — did not.
After the trio jumped into the water, the wind picked up and the boat drifted away from the swimmers; Barrios was seen struggling in the now choppy waters before disappearing below the surface.
A passing boat managed to pick up his two friends, but Barrios never resurfaced.
Search and rescue teams were called in as Scuba divers scoured the bottom of the lake, but to no avail. Side-scan sonar was deployed to search the deeper sections of the lake, but for two days they found nothing.
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It wasn’t until the third day, after studying photos the tragic party had taken just before Barrios disappeared, that they found his body on the bottom of the lake, 50 feet below the surface, ABC7 reported at the time.
On Wednesday, the alarm was raised after a boater on the lake found Rivera’s four-year-old son Josey alone on a pontoon boat, asleep and unharmed, wearing a life vest.
He told deputies his mom jumped into the water, but didn’t come back. An adult life vest was also found on the boat.
Several people have drowned in Lake Piru over the years; according to one former long-serving parks and recreation services manager there, most victims are inexperienced swimmers who are not wearing life jackets and who overestimate their own abilities, or swim in prohibited areas.
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