The body of a Hollywood actress’ daughter has been left in the morgue for weeks as her parents desperately try to prove her death was not a suicide.
Authorities allege Daelena McKay committed suicide after being found hanged with a scarf in the bathroom of her home on May 23. Her father, Dwayne Adway, had appeared in numerous hit television shows, including “CSI,” “NYPD Blue,” “ER” and “The Steve Harvey Show.”
A man who called 911 identifying himself as DaElena’s boyfriend said he tried to resuscitate her after discovering her body but was unable to save her.
The Los Angeles County coroner told the Daily Mail that an autopsy was not necessary based on an external examination and the “circumstances” of Da’Elena’s death and therefore was not performed.
Adway said she has doubts about the cause of her daughter’s death.
“I’m trying to put pressure on the LAPD,” Adway told The Post on Saturday. “They are sticking with the status quo and are not going to investigate this case any further. It seems like we’re seeing a lot of cases in Los Angeles where black and brown girls are murdered and presented as suicides.”
His mother also claimed MacKay, 20, had suspicious injuries and criticised the lack of an autopsy in the case.
“Her body tells a different story to what the police are telling us – there are two stab wounds about an inch apart from the front of her body down to her back, bruising and bleeding from those wounds, as well as other bleeding,” Elaine Mackay told the Daily Mail.
“All of these findings, which I discovered because I had no option but to examine her body myself, were not listed in the County Coroner’s report. The County Coroner only performed a toxicology test, no autopsy was performed.”
Adway disagreed, arguing Saturday that an autopsy is unlikely to shed any further light on DaElena’s cause of death.
McKay lived in the El Centro Hollywood building while attending Los Angeles City College. The Daily Mail reported on Saturday.
Elaine McKay told the outlet that the man who called police was not the same man DaElena had been in an on-and-off relationship with for many years in Texas.
“My daughter was not suicidal. She had met with a therapist the day before. [they] “Doctors said there were no clinical signs of depression or suicide and that our daughter was full of life and very keen about life,” Elaine MacKay claimed. “She had won a poetry competition, was excited about her 21st birthday and was actively pursuing modelling and acting, following in her parents’ footsteps.”
“I am heartbroken and saddened by the loss of my beautiful, intelligent and talented daughter,” Adway said.
“I call for a thorough investigation by the LAPD to find truth and justice.” he told an NBC affiliate in Los Angeles.
The mother claims her ex-husband is refusing to fully fund a private autopsy for her daughter, whose body has been placed in a morgue.
“This autopsy is crucial to the case and I don’t understand why the father won’t do one when he knows it’s so important,” she said. “Because he has the money to pay for the full autopsy and I don’t have ‘my half’. Why would he do this to his daughter and have her just sitting in the morgue since June 18th?”
But Adway told The Post that he had checked with two private forensic pathologists who told him they had no doubt Da’Elena had been strangled and that their findings were unlikely to differ from those of the medical examiner.
“The issue is not that she was strangled, but how she was strangled,” Adway said. “A pathologist won’t be able to determine that. That’s up to the LAPD, and both my mother and I have gone to them for advice regarding further investigation of this case.”
Adway said he had met the man who called 911 about his daughter and was concerned about the man’s actions. He did not give the man’s name.
The coroner’s office could not immediately be reached for comment.
