Black Spokane woman’s death ruled accident despite social media storm alleging murder

Despite tweets shared thousands of times claiming a Black Spokane woman was murdered, the Spokane County Medical Examiner’s Office has ruled 23-year-old Diamond Morrow’s death an accidental overdose.

In June, a tweet by Morrow’s former classmate alleged Morrow was murdered and that police and media were overlooking the death of a Black woman. The tweet called on people to contact police and ask for a vigorous investigation, saying, “Black. Lives. Matter.” Twitter users retweeted the claims thousands of times.

Investigators kept an open mind about the possibility of foul play and the investigation was “very by-the-book,” said Sgt. Terry Preuninger, Spokane Police Department spokesperson.

“We take every death seriously,” SPD spokesperson Julie Humphreys said. “We’re not going to do anything different because of an allegation that we’re not investigating. We take everything seriously.”

The medical examiner found no evidence of intent, according to a statement given to the Spokesman-Review. The medical examiner ruled her death an accident caused by Fentanyl, a powerful synthetic painkiller similar to morphine but 50 to 100 times more potent. The statement also pointed to an uptick in fentanyl deaths in 2019 and 2020.

For the Spokane Police Department, the case is closed as investigators were in agreement with the medical examiner that the death was accidental, Preuninger said.

“Unfortunately there was a lesson to be learned on the social media part,” Preuninger said. “There’s nothing to hold a person accountable on social media and in this case by making snap decisions and pushing out information that’s not accurate, you can do a lot of damage.”

He said it took police “dozens and dozens” of hours to address calls coming in alleging that the department wasn’t doing anything and that there’d been no investigation.