Akul Dhawan’s father says when he called University of Illinois police about his missing son, he was transferred to the coroner and told the 18-year-old freshman was dead
The heartbroken parents of a University of Illinois student found dead on campus with signs of hypothermia say police didn’t thoroughly search for their son during the nine hours he was missing in freezing temperatures.
“The reason they never found him is because they never searched for him and he was right there, he was right there,” a distraught Ish Dhawan told The Messenger of the search for his son.
Akul Dhawan, a freshman at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champagne, was reported missing by friends to campus police around 1:30am on January 20, the department said in a statement .
Akul, 18, was discovered dead by a school employee around 11 a.m. the same day “on the back porch of a building,” according to police.
An autopsy found “evidence of hypothermic skin changes” with preliminary findings showing no signs of of significant trauma, the Champaign County Coroner reported.