Authorities said Monday that they are "confident" a body found in California's Lake Piru earlier in the morning is former "Glee" actress Naya Rivera.
Ventura County Sheriff Bill Ayub told reporters the medical examiner would make the official identification and an autopsy will be performed. Rivera’s family has been notified of the discovery.
Ayub added that there was "no indication of foul play and no indication this was a suicide."
The body was found at the northeast corner of the lake near the surface of the water, five days after the 33-year-old Rivera disappeared. Her 4-year-old son, Josey, was found on July 8 asleep and alone on a rented pontoon boat.
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When the boat failed to return on Wednesday, its vendor found the vessel drifting in the northern end of the lake with the boy asleep on board. According to authorities, the vendor told investigators that the boy and his mother had been swimming. The boy got back into the boat, but she didn’t.
The boy was wearing a life vest, and another life jacket was found in the boat along with Rivera’s identification. Her car was found in a parking area. Josey, the son of Rivera's ex-husband, actor Ryan Dorsey, is "in good health," authorities previously confirmed.
Naya Rivera arrives at the Marie Claire's Fresh Faces Party at Soho House on April 8, 2014, in West Hollywood, Calif. (2014 Valerie Macon/Getty Images)
Authorities said the following day that they believed Rivera had drowned and the rescue mission had become a recovery.
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According to Ayub, the water "is between 35 and 60 feet deep" in the area where the body was found, "and there's heavy brush and trees on the lake bed there."
Low visibility played a factor in the time it took authorities to find her body. Captain Eric Buschow of the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department previously told Fox News the crew suspended its search efforts at 10 p.m. July 8 due to the dark conditions.
FILE - In this Jan. 13, 2018, file photo, Naya Rivera participates in the 'Step Up: High Water' panel during the YouTube Television Critics Association Winter Press Tour in Pasadena, Calif. (Willy Sanjuan/Invision/AP, File)
“Our divers couldn’t see anything and it was becoming dangerous for them,” he added at the time. The search ended at sundown on each subsequent day until her body was discovered on Monday.
According to Ayub, Josey told investigators that his mother helped him get back on board the boat. He then looked back and saw her disappear into the water.
"It would be speculation to say at this point," Ayub said of what potentially could have happened. "There are a lot of currents on the lake that get up here, particularly in the afternoon. We believe it was mid-afternoon when she disappeared. The idea of perhaps being that the boat started drifting, it was unanchored, and that she mustered enough energy to get her son back onto the boat, but not enough to save herself."
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The sheriff said that Rivera's family "has expressed their gratitude to all those involved in the search efforts."
"As you can imagine, it's been an extremely difficult time for her family throughout this ordeal," Ayub added. "As fathers, mothers, sons and daughters, our hearts are with them and we share in their grief for Naya's loss. We've been in direct contact with the family throughout this entire time and we've kept them updated on the progress of our search efforts throughout. Our hearts also go out to Naya's many friends and fans who have been holding out hope for the best over the past few days."
Rivera is best known for playing Santana Lopez on the Fox television series “Glee” between 2009 and 2015. Santana was a cheerleader in the musical-comedy and appeared on 113 episodes. Santana was one of the many LGBTQ characters in the show.
FILE - Naya Rivera, a cast member in the television series 'Glee,' poses at a screening and Q&A for the show, at the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles on May 1, 2012. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello, File)
“Naya Rivera was a fierce talent with so much more to do and this is such a terrible tragedy. We are forever grateful for the indelible contribution she made to ‘Glee,’ from the first episode to the last," 20th Century Fox TV and Fox Entertainment said in a statement obtained by The Associated Press.
A native of Santa Clarita, Calif., Rivera began acting at age 4, appearing in “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” “Family Matters” and “The Bernie Mac Show.”
She auditioned for her role as Santana Lopez by singing Destiny’s Child’s “Emotion.” The pilot offered her no speaking lines.
Rivera played a secondary character — the mean cheerleader with blistering put-downs — in the show’s first season, but became a show regular in the second season as she struggled to reveal her character’s sexual identity. Many on social media credited her character for making them feel better about their own sexuality.
“It would be an understatement to say that ‘Glee’ changed my life. It overhauled it. It got me out of debt. It helped to cement my career. And before the show, I’d never had a group of people I was that close with,” she wrote in her 2016 memoir titled, “Sorry Not Sorry: Dreams, Mistakes, and Growing Up.”
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“But while ‘Glee’ changed our lives, it didn’t necessarily change who we were. We started the show as a ragtag group of misfits, and six seasons later, when we filmed the last episode, we were still the same bunch of misfits. Just now wearing more expensive jeans.”
The announcement of her presumed death comes seven years to the day after co-star Cory Monteith died at 31.
After the show, Rivera sought success in film and music. She made her feature film debut in 2014’s “At the Devil’s Door,” playing a woman caught in the middle of supernatural events, and released the single “Sorry” in 2013 featuring rapper Big Sean, her one-time fiance.
Rivera and Dorsey finalized their divorce in June 2018 after nearly four years of marriage. In her memoir, she wrote that her son was “my greatest success, and I will never do any better than him."
Fox News' Tyler McCarthy and The Associated Press contributed to this report
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