Object won't unload after being parented.

I appended a scene with just one object.
had it snap to and parent to an empty.
when i try to unload it it won’t disappear.
i have another one that’s appended, which doesn’t get parented and it dissapears on unload.
i unparented it by parenting it to nothing before unloading the scene.
still won’t disappear.

EDIT: i used the removeObject code from here, and deleted the unparenting and it worked fine.