Lauren Smith-Fields was a beautiful young woman, a former high school track star who was studying to become a physical therapist. She was active on YouTube, TikTok and Instagram, posting pictures and videos of herself looking healthy and glamorous. She did not use drugs, say her family members, whose grief over her untimely death is as apparent as the sense that something is missing from the story of her demise, on December 12, at age 23. Her family does not believe that Smith-Fields died of an accidental overdose – as the Connecticut Office of the Chief Medical Examiner has said – and one can’t blame them for doubting this ruling.
Smith-Fields’s friends and family have publicly wondered if racism may explain why the Bridgeport police were allegedly so careless in their investigation of the scene, saying that detectives failed to collect vital evidence, notify Smith-Fields’s family of her death, or rigorously investigate the last person known to have been in her company – the white man she met earlier that evening on a Bumble date. This wouldn’t be the first time that someone had been drugged on a dating app date – in fact, it’s a serious problem that has gone largely underreported.
While there have been many stories of people being slipped drugs by their dating site matches going back years, this dangerous phenomenon has not made its way into the broader narrative of online dating culture. Just last week a 43-year-old man in Perth, Australia, was charged with drugging and raping two women in their twenties he met on a sugar daddy dating site, allegedly putting ketamine in their drinks before sexually assaulting them. In 2019, a Calgary anesthesiologist, Barry Wollach, was convicted of raping a woman he met on Bumble, who suspected she had been drugged, feeling “woozy” after having had dinner with him. (Wollach was convicted of rape though the judge ruled that there was insufficient evidence to say that he had also drugged the victim. Wollach denied both accusations.)
Common date rape drugs such as Rohypnol are usually odorless, colorless, and tasteless, and leave the body quickly, so are hard to detect. But cases with medical evidence continually crop up in the news. In 2021, for example, a woman in British Columbia reported feeling so nauseous after a Tinder date that she went to a hospital, where she was given a drug test that showed MDMA and methamphetamine in her system, substances she had not knowingly ingested.
As of now there is no proof that Smith-Fields was drugged by her Bumble date, or anyone else. But the lethal mixture in her system was powerful and strange – the toxicology report showed fentanyl, an opioid; promethazine and hydroxyzine, antihistamines that can be used as sedatives; and alcohol (her date told police that he and Smith-Fields had been drinking tequila) – raising questions about why a young woman with no known history of drug abuse would have such a varied mixture of substances in her system.
The lawyer for Smith-Fields’s family, Darnell Crosland, told Bridgeport station WTNH: “Now to find out that all of these substances are in their daughter’s body that basically took her life, they’re so angry right now. This looks further like a manslaughter.” On January 25, after weeks of activism by her family and others, and a tweet from Cardi B (which the family credited with helping raise awareness), Bridgeport police opened a criminal investigation. Whether #justiceforlauren will become a reality remains to be seen.
Meanwhile, Bumble has issued a statement saying that the “physical and emotional safety of our community is of paramount importance. We investigate member complaints and take swift, decisive action against any members who do not meet our standards.” While Bumble may be taking “swift, decisive action” in this high-profile case, they have not always been so quick to come to users’ aid. In 2020, ProPublica reported that the company failed to respond to a user’s complaint of being sexually assaulted and that her alleged attacker’s profile continued to appear on the app. The presence of sexual offenders on dating apps is another disturbing problem. In 2020, Bumble and other popular dating services became the focus of a House subcommittee investigation into sex offenders and minors using their services.
It has become increasingly clear that the online dating industry is in need of regulation, and that the controversial Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 needs to be amended. Section 230 grants internet companies immunity from liability in cases of third-party wrongdoing – which means that, even if it were to be proved that someone had died after being drugged by a dating app match, her family could not sue the company. Such protection from civil suits diminishes companies’ impetus to protect their users.
Smith-Fields’s family is suing the Bridgeport police department, which “has been racially insensitive to this family and has treated this family with no respect and has violated their civil rights,” according to their notice of claim. “They have failed to investigate this matter and they refuse to view the last person with Lauren Smith-Fields before she died as a person of interest.”
Smith-Fields’s brother, Lakeem Jetter, told NBC Connecticut that when he asked a police officer involved in the case about his sister’s Bumble date, “He said he was a very nice guy and they weren’t looking into him anymore. It was almost like he was sticking up for him and it seemed weird to hear that from a detective.”
On January 31, Bridgeport Mayor Joseph Ganim said that two detectives involved in the case have been placed on administrative leave and are being investigated by the Bridgeport police department’s internal affairs office.
Nancy Jo Sales is a New York-based writer. Her latest book is Nothing Personal: My Secret Life in the Dating App Inferno
