Bodies found at Frisco home identified as parents of boy killed in January

Sumeet Dhawan often referred to the the last few months as a “nightmare.”

But no one could know how that nightmare would end for Sumeet and his wife, Pallavi, who was under suspicion of killing their 10-year-old son, Arnav.

Sometime in the past week, the Frisco couple apparently ended their lives, which had begun to unravel earlier this year.

Police were called to their home Wednesday and found a woman’s body in the swimming pool and a dead man inside the house.

On Thursday, authorities confirmed Sumeet and Pallavi Dhawan were the deceased, but they still would not give any details about the manner of death.

Family members have received word of their deaths, according to Dallas attorney David Finn, who represented Pallavi Dhawan.

“These were gentle, good, decent people,” Finn said of the couple. “To me it’s a personal loss.”


While he doesn’t know how the couple died, “I can’t see Sumeet hurting her, and I can’t see Pallavi hurting him,” said Finn, who last spoke to his client on Friday.

Sumeet had recently spent more than three hours testifying before a Collin County grand jury. Finn said he reassured the couple that the length of the testimony was an encouraging sign.

Finn said he “didn’t sense that anything was out of the ordinary” in his last conversations with the couple.

“If I had any sense there was an imminent danger, I would have taken some kind of action,” he said. “I did not get that sense. The family didn’t get that sense.”

The first indication that something was amiss came on Wednesday when Finn got a call from Sumeet’s sister, who lives in Irving. She said she hadn’t been able to reach her brother.

“I said if you’re concerned about it, drive over there. She did, and here we are,” Finn said. “I don’t know if she called 911 or went to a neighbor and called 911.”

Police were still collecting evidence at the Dhawans’ house on Thursday. Yellow crime scene tape surrounded the two-story brick residence in the 15000 block of Mountain View Lane where blue ribbons were tied to a tree in the front yard.

They had been there since a February vigil for Arnav that drew dozens of friends and well-wishers. Blue was the fifth-grader’s favorite color.

Now neighbors are grappling with another tragedy in their midst.

“It’s a safe neighborhood, but you’re not immune from things that happen in life,” said Mel Kalka, who lives a few doors away from the Dhawans.

He said the close-knit neighbors along the street get together regularly.

Kalka knew the names of all of his neighbors, except the Dhawans. They just didn’t come outside, he said.

Unlike her husband, who had relatives in the area, Pallavi had no family in the U.S., Finn said.

She had abandoned a successful career in computer programming to devote herself to caring for her special needs child.

She was alone for long periods while her husband traveled on business trips and often felt overworked, underappreciated and isolated. “She was on an island,” Finn said.

The couple, who had an arranged marriage in India, had been living in the U.S. for a number of years.

Arnav was born in Madison, Wis., on March 22, 2003.

He was diagnosed early on with a brain cyst and microcephaly, a condition characterized by a small head circumference.

“Arnav’s needs always came first for me,” the mother wrote.

In 2007, Sumeet’s job took the family back to India where they lived for five years.

They returned to the U.S. so Arnav would have access to “world class educational and medical facilities,” the affidavit stated.

The “nightmare” that Sumeet Dhawan spoke about started January 29 when police discovered Arnav’s decomposing body in the family’s home.

Police said Pallavi nodded her head when asked if she had killed the boy – an allegation Finn denies.

He said the child’s medical conditions contributed to his death. The Collin County medical examiner could not determine a cause of death but ruled it was probably due to “natural disease.”

Pallavi said her son had died unexpectedly in the middle of the night. She placed his body in the bathtub and surrounded it with ice-filled plastic bags.

She said was trying to preserve her son’s body until her husband returned home from a business trip so he could perform the necessary Hindu rituals.

But at recent examining hearing, police said the couple didn’t mention anything about the child’s medical condition or required religious rituals when they were interviewed.

Sumeet said he didn’t know why his son’s body was in the bathtub, Frisco police Detective Wade Hornsby told the court.

The detective told the court that two consulting physicians who reviewed the boy’s medical files said his benign cyst should not have shortened his life.

The physicians said the boy could have been smothered, Hornsby testified.

Finn said there no evidence to support that.

Now, he said, his client will never get a chance to clear her name and the case will be left hanging.

“We’ll never know,” he said. “They were very gentle souls and they were in an impossible situation.” LINK