The body of a man was found on Saturday, Feb. 10, in Newport News, Virginia.
Officers responded to a call to perform a welfare check around 9:30 a.m. at a home located at Mulberry Village community in the 400 block of Rivers Ridge Circle.
A neighbor, who wished to remain anonymous, said the deceased man’s nephew in California talked to him on Thursday to check on his uncle.
“I told him I couldn’t do it Friday, because I was going out of town, but I’d do it on Saturday,” he told WTKR.
When the neighbor went to check on Saturday morning he smelled an odor from inside the home. After he knocked and got no answer, he contacted police.
“I gave them the key,“ he told WTKR. ”They entered the house and found the gentleman.”
It’s unclear why no one noticed the man had been deceased for so long.
Authorities believe there was no foul play behind the man’s death.
Other neighbors told WTKR that the whole incident was strange. Some believed the man could have been sent to a nursing home or moved away from his family.
But in actuality, he had been inside his home the whole time.
“Summer has come and we didn’t smell anything,” an anonymous neighbor told WTKR.
The neighbor who did the welfare check said he hadn’t seen the man in two years.
“He was very secluded. He didn’t want to be bothered with a bunch of people,” he told WTKR.
