‘It’s worthless’: Family of dead honors student slams report that claims threats about sex video did not lead to his shocking suicide

An officer who questioned 16-year-old boy about a sex video just hours before the popular and accomplished teen leapt to his death has been cleared of any wrongdoing in an internal review of the meeting that preceded the shocking suicide.

As CrimeOnline previously reported, Corey Walgren of Naperville, Illinois, met with his high school dean and a Naperville police officer in January to discuss allegations that he had recorded a consensual sexual encounter on his phone and shared the recording with some friends.

According to earlier reports in the Chicago Tribune, the officer, who is assigned to the school, told Walgren, who had never been in trouble before, that he may be guilty of child pornography and have to register as a sex offender. Police also reportedly said that the recording in question was mostly just darkness, and did not include any discernible images, while it did record audio of the encounter. Walgren reportedly did not have the consent of his partner to record the encounter.

Hours after the meeting, Walgren was dead of a fall from a parking structure a couple of miles from the school.

Walgren’s parents had previously spoken out about what they claim were excessive threats in the meeting, and in May filed a lawsuit against the police department and the school district, accusing the authorities in the meeting with their son of causing “extreme, intolerable and excessive emotional and psychological distress.”

But this week, the Chicago Tribune obtained documents showing that police had done an internal review of the incident and found that Officer Brent Heun was not at fault for Walgren’s suicide.

The heavily redacted report said that at the January 11 meeting before Walgren’s death,”conversation was short, not prolonged, and the tone of the conversation was agreeable.”

“Heun did not use forceful or aggressive tones or tactics nor did he threaten (Corey) with any of the same.”

The Chicago Tribune reports that Naperville Police ChiefRobert Marshall had previously said that the Walgren family’s lawsuit had “mischaracterized” the incident.

The internal investigation reportedly began the day after Walgren’s suicide, well before the family filed a lawsuit. But the newspaper reports that the investigation relied almost exclusively on accounts from the school’s dean and officer Heun.

The Walgren family appears to be dissatisfied with the internal review. Their attorney has criticized the department for declining to interview Walgren’s mother as part of the review, despite the fact that she had a conversation on speakerphone at one point during her son’s meeting with the officer and the dean.

“It’s the police department investigating themselves and it’s worthless,” Walgren family attorney Terry Ekl told the Chicago Tribune. “They’re trying to rationalize what happened so they can find an innocent explanation for everything.”

 

Feature photo: Family handout