A COMMUNITY LOSS

Two Years Later, Family Seeks Anwers To Boy's Death

Everyone loved Cody Cornelison.

His grandmother said so. His principal said so. Even the law
enforcement personnel who knew him said they liked him.

Everyone loved Cody Cornelison. Except, perhaps, Cody.

Struggling in school, having admitted to drug use for the second
time, the 13-year-old Hagerman boy killed himself on Feb. 9, 2006.

That fatal shot robbed his family of their son, and a community of a
child still mourned to this day.

Cody's death happened in minutes, yet it plunged his family into two
years of legal wrangling over just who may have been at fault.

There's no disputing, Myrna Cornelison said, that her grandson wasn't
the best student. He had attention deficit disorder and was in the
process of being diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity
disorder. He was the type of child to cave in rather than explode
under pressure. He struggled in the classroom.

His grandparents, caring for the boy during his parents' divorce,
considered pulling him from the school district.

"We knew he was unhappy," said Myrna, a former janitor at the school.
"(But) as grandparents, it's pretty scary to do home schooling."

Lyle Cornelison was once a Navy gunner's mate. For Cody's 12th
Christmas, he bought his grandson the rifle. The boy, Myrna said, was
carefully taught how to safely handle the gun.

The following autumn was a hard one for Cody at school, where he
refuse to do any work in his classes and was even suspended for a day
for fighting. His father, Mark Cornelison, was soon to be released
from the Community Work Center in Twin Falls, and Cody planned move
with him to a different school district.

But in December school officials confronted Cody with suspicion that
he was high in class. He admitted to using marijuana the previous
week, but fled the school after he was told he would have to meet
with the principal and face punishment.

Police later found him, but they worked out a deal with Cody: Stay
clean or go to detention, according to a statement submitted to the
Gooding County Sheriff's Department by Hagerman Police Chief Loren Miller.

The deal didn't hold. During a series of drug tests of other students
requested by Hagerman Junior/Senior High School Principal Mark Kress,
a student who tested positive for marijuana identified Cody as his
source.

Miller, who had been administering the tests, and Gooding County
sheriff's deputies were summoned to the school that day in February
to take custody of Cody and the other students. Miller talked to
Cody, then took him home to fetch a couple of pipes.

As Miller spoke to his grandmother, Cody went into his bedroom and
shot himself.

Myrna Cornelison covered the wound, trying to stop the bleeding.
Miller radioed for help and came to assist her. Two years later, the
scene is vivid in Myrna's mind.

"I put my finger over (the wound), and then I felt his spirit leave
his body," she said, tearing up at the memory.

Her grief gradually turned to disgust. She believes her grandson was
pushed past the brink.

A classmate told the family that officers had Cody backed up against
a wall at the school and were yelling at him.

And when Miller and Cody arrived at his home, the chief spoke loudly
about arresting Cody, seeming intent on intimidating him, Myrna said.
Though she called the school that afternoon for another matter, she
said, she was never told Cody had even been pulled out of class.

The family sought legal recourse. But they were misinformed about the
statute of limitations for filing against a state agency, she said,
and two local lawyers, the American Civil Liberties Union, state Rep.
Wendy Jaquet, D-Ketchum, and U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, were
unable to help. The whole problem, she said, was downplayed in the
incident reports by what she calls a "good old boys" club in the county.

"They watch each other's backs," she said, noting that the
investigation was handled by Gooding County deputies.

Gooding County Sheriff Shaun Gough said his department was just
following standard protocol when it interviewed Chief Miller and
checked his gun and other equipment. Deputies behaved respectfully,
he said. And it's far from the first time a grieving family has
searched for someone to blame, he said.

"They start asking all these questions," Gough said. "And it happens
a lot."

Idaho State Police Maj. Dan Thornton, who is in charge of the state
agency's major criminal investigations, said it is standard practice
for law enforcement to conduct their own internal investigations, as
Gooding County did for itself while it worked with Hagerman police.
Though he could not speak to Cody's situation, he said if an agency
has the manpower, it will have one officer review what happened and
determine whether other officers followed proper procedures and
training. ISP has a whole investigations unit dedicated to internal
reviews.

Miller could not be reached for comment for this article. But Kress,
who told officers that Cody appeared calm and composed during the
afternoon, also said the officers behaved themselves while in his
school. Students still mourn Cody, he said, and he himself did some
soul-searching after the incident.

"He was a wonderful, nice kid," Kress said, adding that the school
bears no ill will toward the family. "I miss him being here."

Cody's death may have been impossible to predict and even harder to
avoid. Pat Gaskin, chairwoman of the South Central Idaho Suicide
Prevention Action Network, said suicide is one of the hardest things
to predict. As a teenage male, Cody was in one of the most at-risk
groups. But that and other risk factors such as ADD, drug use and
stress don't necessarily add up to suicide.

Gaskin compared it to cancer.

"A lot of people don't have the risk factors and get cancer," she
said. "A lot of people have the risk factors and don't get cancer."

The family seems to have accepted that their legal options have run
out. Now, Myrna said, they just want to alert other Idahoans before
their families suffer through the same pointless fight.

The incident further strained an already-struggling family, she said.
Though Mark Cornelison was released several months after Cody's
death, he led Twin Falls County sheriff's deputies on a drunken car
chase down U.S. Highway 93 in March 2007. He's now serving at least
five years in the Idaho Correctional Center in Boise. Cody's mother,
Trisa, still lives in Twin Falls. Both of the couple's other children
are struggling, Myrna said, and one is in rehab for alcohol abuse.

"We're just all messed up now," Myrna said.

And other families with complaints about public agencies could have a
similarly hard time navigating the legal system. The window for
filing a tort claim, she said, is six months. For a mourning family
that then has to find a lawyer, that can be a shorter than it
sounds, she said.

"I just don't want this to happen to anybody anymore."