DDG works well enough for me to be my daily driver, but it's absolute garbage for any kind of news search. Bing prioritizes MSN repost spam from dubious sources, so I'm better off going just directly to news sites I trust.
You can actually find this rather rapidly through Wikipedia.
In fact, you can identify the exact moment when the news about the death leaked, when the first editor adds it to the article. Generally, experienced editors will keep it out until a reliable source is provided, which typically happens quite quickly.
In fact I've found out about a number of celebrity deaths, just by having them on my watchlist.
