The grieving parents of an 18-year-old University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign student are seeking answers after their son froze to death near the campus last weekend.
A friend of Akul B. Dhawan reported him missing at around 1:30 a.m. Saturday telling police he had not heard from him for about an hour.
University police launched a search for the missing student in the area where he was last seen, his residence, and the path between the two locations, to no avail.
About 10 hours later, shortly after 11 a.m., an employee of the university found the body of “a man on the back porch of a building.”
Dhawan was “deceased at the time he was found” and his body showed signs of hypothermia. An official cause of death is pending toxicology results.
Dhawan’s parents have since the tragedy filed a complaint against the university police department for negligence.
“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 said.
“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.”
