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Dead SIU student's mom "totally disgusted" with investigation

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Lovely Varughese accuses local investigators of botching the probe into her son's death.
Lovely Varughese accuses local investigators of botching the probe into her son's death.
 
Varughese family friend/local media personality Monica Zukas shows Mayor Henry autopsy photos during Tuesday night's council session.
Varughese family friend/local media personality Monica Zukas shows Mayor Henry autopsy photos during Tuesday night's council session.

CARBONDALE -- Having dropped city and county officials from her family's lawsuit over her son's death, Lovely Varughese put them on trial Tuesday night in her own way.

As cameras rolled during the Carbondale City Council's public session, Mrs. Varughese went detail by detail and unanswered question by unanswered question, offering her case for why the family believes Pravin Varughese's death in February 2014 was not an accident, as the coroner ruled.

"I'm a nurse," she said. "I saw my son about two hours after he was found. They showed us only his face and he was covered-up to the neck. We all saw the bruise on his forehead, even before the pathologist saw him. I knew right then that my son was injured. And I remember saying out loud that someone beat him."

Lovely Varughese says when the funeral director told the family they needed to see Pravin's entire body, they realized they needed to conduct a second autopsy, this time in Chicago, where they live. The second one found Pravin died not only of hypothermia, as Jackson County's coroner ruled, but also of blunt force trauma.

Beginning to cry as she spoke to council members, Mrs. Varughese said, "I want to know if (Jackson County's) pathologist even looked at my son or just sat in the next room and had the technician open and close him. It breaks my heart that he was just kept in the body bag during the entire procedure. What happened to following medical ethics and following standard procedure?"

She said her son was shown no dignity from the moment he was reported missing to the time he lay on the pathologist's table.

"You wouldn't even do something like this to your animal," she said.

Mrs. Varughese, who was born in India, told council members there were glaring errors from the beginning.

"He was called a white male on the police flyer; a black male by the driver; Middle Eastern by the pathologist; and in the coroner's report he was described as a female in a couple places," she said.

The driver she was referring to was Gaege Bethune. His image was captured by the camera inside an Illinois State Police trooper's squad car. The trooper had seen Bethune's truck parked on the side of Route 13 near Buffalo Wild Wings. Bethune acknowledged to the trooper that he and Pravin Varughese had been in a fight and he claimed the 19-year-old had run into the woods nearby when Bethune told him "cops" were coming.

It was in those woods that Varughese's body was found after Bethune went to Carbondale police days later.

The family does not believe Bethune is telling the whole truth and is suing him.

His mother indicated to city council members she's not sure if investigators were straight with her about what Bethune told them either.

"I believe the search started at 8 o'clock in the morning (on February 18, 2014). And by 9:30 in the morning, Pravin was found and taken away," Lovely Varughese told them. "How is that possible? Did they know exactly where to go? How many officers were in the search? Who found him? What happened to the surveillance cameras in the area? We were told conflicting stories from the authorities about the location and position he was found."

After she concluded her remarks, family friend and local media personality Monica Zukas showed the mayor and council members autopsy photos. A couple of them seemed stunned by what they were looking at and Councilwoman Jessica Bradshaw appeared overcome by tears and left the chamber for a few minutes after Zukas' presentation.

The injuries to Pravin's body, Zukas alleged in open session, clearly showed blunt force trauma of the type that might be delivered by a baseball bat.

A special prosecutor is now looking over the investigation.

Mrs. Varughese did single out the current mayor, Mike Henry, and the current police chief, Jeff Grubbs, for their assistance and sensitivity any time the family is in town. In February, they returned to the woods by Buffalo Wild Wings to mourn the second anniversary of Pravin's death, two years that have been filled with agony for the teen's family.



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