DALLAS (TIP): A Frisco woman, Pallavi Dhawan, charged with murder in the death of her 10-year-old son says she didn’t kill him. Arnav Dhawan was found dead in a bathtub Dec. 30 at his parents’ home.
Pallavi’s attorney, David Finn, said Monday, February 10 that the toxicology reports on Arnav are back, but they are being reviewed by the medical examiner and likely will not be made public for about a week. Frisco Police said that Arnav’s mother, Pallavi Dhawan, confessed to killing her son — when asked by officers if she killed Arnav, they say she nodded her head, indicating yes.
But Finn and Sumeet, Pallavi’s husband, say that never nodded her head. “I did nothing to cause his death,” Pallavi Dhawan said Monday in an exclusive interview with FOX 4. Pallavi says when she picked Arnav up from school the day before his death, she knew something was wrong. “He came, we went home, I offered him a snack,” said Pallavi. “He didn’t want to have a snack, which was a little bit unusual. So I offered him some grapes.
He had a few bites of grapes and then he didn’t feel like eating. He said, ‘I don’t feel like eating. Can we go somewhere out?'” Pallavi says they went out to a movie, but Arnav said he was tired and wanted to go home, so she took him to Toys “R” Us and then their house. “I said, ‘Why don’t you just, you know, change and go to sleep?'” said Pallavi. “And he said, ‘You know, I don’t feel like changing.’ And he was still looking…he had to see if his Smurfs was recorded.
That was important to him. So he checked if his Smurfs was recorded. He checked that, but then he was so tired, he didn’t feel like changing. And I could see that he was tired. He said, ‘I’m tired and I’m feeling little bit cold.’ So then I said, you know, ‘OK,’ and I touched him and he did seem a little bit cold, but there was no fever or anything.” Pallavi says she read Arnav a story and put him to bed, but he got up twice, complaining of being cold.
“This time, I decided to stay with him, and I slept next to him,” she said. “…I woke up Saturday morning, I tried to wake him up, and he wouldn’t get up.” “And what did you think at first?” FOX 4’s Shaun Rabb asked. “At first I thought…he just didn’t want to wake up,” said Pallavi. “And then you realized that he was dead?” asked Rabb. “I think I knew, but I didn’t want to believe it,” said Pallavi.
The mother says she picked up her son and realized he had relieved himself in his pants. “…I actually picked him up,” she said. “I picked him up, Shaun; I picked him up. I picked him up. I held on to him and I took him to the bathtub, because I didn’t want to believe he’s gone. I took him to the bathtub…’cause he was feeling a bit cold to me.”
Pallavi says tried to save Arnav. “So I tried to push on his chest and just blow on his mouth, saying, ‘Get up!'” said Pallavi. “He wouldn’t open his eyes. He wouldn’t bend his arms. It took me a while to just tell myself, ‘He’s gone. He’s gone.’ And he was there, lying there, and I’m looking at him…he’s not there. What do I do next?’ Pallavi said she put shopping bags full of ice around Arnav to preserve his body for her husband, who was away on a business trip at the time.