Death of Dwayne Adway’s daughter ruled a suicide, parents demand investigation

The body of a Hollywood actor’s daughter has been lying in the morgue for weeks while her parents desperately try to prove that the young woman’s death was not a suicide.

Authorities say Daelena Mackay, whose father Dwayne Adway had numerous television roles in hits such as “CSI,” “NYPD Blue,” “ER” and “The Steve Harvey Show,” took her own life after she was reportedly found hanging from a scarf in her bathroom on May 23.

A man who called 911 claiming to be Daelena’s boyfriend said he tried to resuscitate her after finding her body, but she could not be saved.

An autopsy was not performed, the Los Angeles County coroner told the Daily Mail, because an external examination and “the circumstances” of Daelena’s death made one unnecessary.

Adway said he had suspicions about the cause of his daughter’s death.

“I’m trying to put pressure on the Los Angeles Police Department,” Adway told The Post on Saturday. “They are determined to stay where they are and not investigate the case any further. That seems to happen a lot in Los Angeles when black and brown girls die and are dismissed as suicides.”

Her mother also insisted that 20-year-old Mackay had suspicious injuries and complained that no autopsy had been performed in the case.

“Her body tells a different story to the one the police are telling us. It shows bruising and bleeding from two stab wounds about an inch apart from each other from the front of her body to her back, as well as further bleeding,” Elaine Mackay told the Daily Mail.

“All of these findings that I found because I had no choice but to examine her body myself, the county medical examiner left out of his report. The county medical examiner only performed toxicology tests, not an autopsy.”

Adway disagreed, saying on Saturday that an autopsy would likely not shed any further light on Daelena’s cause of death.

Mackay lived in the El Centro Hollywood building while studying at Los Angeles City College, the Daily Mail reported on Saturday.

Elaine Mackay told the outlet that the man who called police was not the same boyfriend in Texas with whom Daelena had a long-term on-again, off-again relationship.

“My daughter was not suicidal. She had been to a therapist the day before and (the therapist) said there were no clinical signs of depression or suicide. My daughter was full of life and very happy,” stressed Elaine Mackay. “She was so excited about winning a poetry competition and about her 21st birthday that she was actively pursuing following in her parents’ footsteps and modeling and acting.”

Adway said he was “heartbroken and grieving over the loss of my beautiful, smart and talented daughter.”

“I call for a full investigation by the LAPD in the hope of finding truth and justice,” he told NBC affiliate LA.

The mother claims her ex is refusing to fully fund the private autopsy of her daughter, whose body is in the morgue.

“This autopsy is crucial in this case and I don’t understand why her father is foregoing the autopsy even though he knows it is vital,” she said. “All because I don’t have ‘my half’ while he has money, more than enough to pay for it in full. Why would he do this to our daughter when she has been sitting in the morgue since June 18?”

But Adway told the Washington Post that he had consulted two private medical examiners who told him that since there was no doubt that Daelena was strangled, their autopsy results would not differ from those of the coroner.

“It’s not a question of whether she was strangled, but how she was strangled,” Adway said. “The pathologists can’t determine that. That’s the LAPD’s job, and both the mother and I went with them to look into this case more closely.”

Adway said he met the man who called 911 about his daughter and said he had concerns about his behavior. He declined to give the man’s name.

The coroner could not be immediately reached for comment.