Why keep writing posts that may upset the family and friends of this person. There is way to little information here for any of us to be able to draw any conclusions, so it's all wild speculation. Yes, you can learn from the facts...if you know them. In this case we don't.
Autopsy says drowning, and vomit in the lungs is quite common as salt water drowning easily causes vomiting as a reflex, so all we know it's sadly a drowning.
There are 1001 reasons why and how a diver can drown, so no use going on for ever just guessing why or how, because that will indeed be endless and useless torture for those people who knew this person well.
The primary purpose of this, the Accidents and Incidents forum, is analysis, in order to learn as much as possible from incidents. The end goal is education, to help people avoid similar problems, and just possibly to save someone else's life some time in the future.
People without much of a diving background may also be reading here looking to understand and make sense of a particular tragedy. Regulars of this forum are happy to help them understand diving and the risks involved. That being said, all newcomers have to understand that accident analysis can seem brutal to those who aren't used to it, particularly if they're already understandably upset. Although non-divers, family and friends are most certainly welcome here in this forum, and we definitely appreciate any information they may be able to provide, for their own sake, they may not want to keep reading. If someone is upset, they should consider not posting, even if you have valuable information. Follow-up questions seeking clarification often seem impersonal or even harsh.
An accident analysis may discuss different aspects of an incident. There's the factual information about what went wrong, including environmental conditions, the background of those directly involved, equipment, etc. Accidents are often the result of a chain of issues, and analysis also attempts to reconstruct possible sequences of events that may have led to the incident, since it may only take a single corrective action to have avoid the whole series of successive problems. However, because there is often of the lack of information, multiple hypotheses may be discussed, involving much supposition. It is not uncommon for people to ask why discussion isn't restricted only to known facts. The point of most accident analyses including the ones in this forum is to not only identify the specific issues in an incident, but also to identify what other accidents could theoretically have been likely to occur, because of similar causes or circumstances. Speculation is therefor a normal and expected part of any discussion in this forum. On the other hand, participants in the discussion are suppose to clearly distinguish between facts (and how well they may be known) and supposition. Purely hypothetical lines of reasoning should be clearly identified as such, since they didn't actually happen. They still have value though, if even one person takes the lesson and avoids a future serious or fatal accident.
People also ask why not just wait for the official report. Unfortunately, useful reports are extremely rare, and if they do come out, are long after the fact. Even in industrialized countries, there are only a few rare jurisdictions with the institutional knowledge as well as the resources to analyze dive accidents deeply enough to be useful for other divers. Los Angeles County comes to mind, with at least one of the people involved in investigations there occasionally posting in this forum. In most of the rest of the world, at best there's a Coroner/Medical Examiner/autopsy report that says "death by drowning" which is not particularly useful to divers looking to prevent the next accident. In many situations, there may be more knowledge, background and expertise in diving available in this forum than most local investigations have easy access to. To understand the root causes of what happened, the discussion here may be more education than most official reports. However, since it's a free-flowing Internet discussion where anyone can comment, it may also be more confusing or upsetting than any formal report.
