Nearly one year after his daughter's untimely death, the father of Naya Rivera is sharing heartbreaking details about the last time he spoke to her.
George Rivera revealed in an interview with People magazine that he was on a FaceTime call with the "Glee" star on the same day she died from an accidental drowning.
Rivera, who was 33 at the time of her death, had decided to take her son, Josey, now 5, on a rented pontoon boat last July for a day on the water. During the excursion, she called her dad to ask if it was safe to go swimming.
"She would always bounce stuff off me," George Rivera, 64, told People. "And she wanted to go swimming with Josey out in the middle of the lake."
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He advised his daughter against swimming once she told him that the boat she was on didn't have an anchor.
"I could see that the wind was blowing and my stomach was just cringing," he said. "I kept telling her, 'Don't get out of the boat! Don't get out of the boat! It will drift away when you're in the water.'"
A few minutes later, the FaceTime call ended and he began to worry.
"It was just heartbreaking," he said. "I had this bad feeling that was just killing me."
Days after the accident, authorities recovered the actor's body in the lake. An autopsy report that ruled her death an accidental drowning also revealed that Rivera raised her arm and called for help after using the last of her strength to help her son get back on to the pontoon. Josey was later found sleeping on the boat.
Looking back on the tragic accident, Rivera's father said he still can hardly believe that his daughter is gone.
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"It's still pretty much a big blur of pain almost a year later," he said. "Things are slowly coming a little more into focus, but I don't know if I'll ever find closure from this. I miss her every day."
In November, Rivera's ex-husband, Ryan Dorsey, filed a lawsuit on behalf of Josey, claiming her drowning was "utterly preventable," that the boat didn't comply with safety standards and that there were no signs warning about the water.