The parents of an 18-year-old student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign are searching for answers after the son was found dead near campus with signs of hypothermia.
According to the Courier-Journal, Akul B. Dhawan was reported missing on Saturday, January 20, just before 1:30 a.m. His friend told police he had been missing for about an hour.
Ten hours later, Dhawan was found dead on the back porch of a house near campus in west Urbana. According to The News-Gazette, his parents, Ish and Ritu Dhawan, say he was found just 400 feet from where he was reported as missing.
A preliminary autopsy conducted on Tuesday found signs of hypothermia, but a final report is pending toxicology studies, Courier-Journal reports.
Dhawan’s parents are puzzled by the nature of their son’s death.
“This is bizarre, that a kid is never found who was just less than a block, like one minute away, sitting there, dead, frozen to death,” Ish Dhawan told The News-Gazette. “Imagine as a dad and mom what’s going through in our mind. I visualize his every minute that my son froze to death on a university campus.”
They want answers from the police.
“We really need answers,” Ritu Dhawan told The News-Gazette. “What is the proof that they totally searched in this area, around the area they’re talking (about), this half-block? My kid would have been found.”
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