Unattended deaths for those not in the know involve someone dying with their demise going unnoticed anywhere from a few days to even a few months.
It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to know that these can be some of the most disgusting scenes one could come across.
Naturally the longer the deceased remains undiscovered, the more disgusting it can be. Gasses within the body can cause it to bloat and sometimes rupture, having the bodily fluids seep out into the subflooring. Sometimes upon death the person may evacuate their bowels. There are a host of issues that can occur upon the death of a person. Speaking of hosts, the decaying flesh will attract all sorts of insects looking for another meal. It truly is scene that can be burned into your retinas.
One of our more unusual jobs came out of Baltimore, Maryland where we were called to deal with one of these unattended deaths.
The homeowner (we’ll call her Beth) called us to remediate one of her rental properties. Beth had rented this unit to a rather large man in his 40s who was found dead in his bedroom by a concerned neighbor.
From the sounds of the details we received, we knew that we had a complete decontamination and restoration on our hands if there was to be a chance of this unit going back on the market any time soon. Knowing that the clock was ticking, we grabbed our gear and made our way to Baltimore.
Arriving on the scene we found the house of this gruesome site to be located at the end of a dead end street with a sign posted saying such right off of Beth’s property. The irony wasn’t lost upon any of us.
We were greeted by a woman in her 60s who turned out to be Beth. After introductions she led us to the front door where the job awaited us. As we crossed the threshold of the home the first thing we noticed was the unmistakable stench of death. It was absolutely overwhelming, despite the fact that every window on the premises was open in attempt to lessen the ineffable odor that came with the tragic fate that the occupant of the home had met.
It seemed the foulness of the funk only gained strength with every passing minute so we knew that we had to get to work and work quickly. Just when we thought that we were able to get a grip on an odor we reached the ground zero of the job. The master bedroom.
As we opened the door to the bedroom we were immediately able to ascertain that whatever had happened to this man, his last moments on Earth transpired in his bed.
In the middle of the room sat a queen sized bed with a king sized puddle of a reddish, brown color that brought thoughts of a twisted Rorschach test. The bedding, which absorbed as much as it could was now crusted up and cradling a huge mass of maggots, some of which had fallen off the bed and were feeding solely on the dried remains of the man that had stained the floor. Keeping them company were hundreds of flies that seemed like such a mass that it was hard to focus your vision due to the constant cloud of movement.
During one of our breaks we were asking Beth about her deceased tenant. According to her, the tenant was a very devout man of his faith. So devout that when he received a wound on his scalp that refused to heal he believed that divine intervention would save him.
Despite the fact that his injury became so severe, so necrotic that he could push through his skull like a wet paper towel, he maintained that the only medication he needed was prayer. Even though his was prohibited from going to his church due to the objections from the congregation about the odor from his open wound, he still firmly believed that his faith would allow the Almighty to heal him.
The night he passed he was laying in bed asleep. It seems that as he lay there in bed his dog, a large Siberian Husky had leaped onto the bed to keep his master company. Unfortunately the dog misjudged its jump and as it landed on the mattress it lost its footing and stumbled, putting his paw through the soft spot of his injured owner and tearing through the soft tissue and grey matter.
What was really disconcerting was hearing about the coroner’s report. The man was found in a contorted position which indicates that even though his dog’s leap turned out to be fatal for him, his death was not instantaneous. It was assumed that upon the dog’s breach into his skull that the man sat up as the dog struggled to remove his trapped paw which startled the dog and exacerbated things. Once the paw was removed, the man collapsed face down.
The man had laid there dead for weeks and was only discovered due to a concerned neighbor investigating the howling and scratching of the Siberian Husky. Once the neighbor realized what was going on, they called the police. Beth told us that as the police arrived they noticed that the dog’s paw was covered in blood up to its wrist, apparently from the intrusion into the skull.
After what seemed like forever of removing liquefied remains and soiled furnishings, thoroughly sanitizing and decontaminating the entire house top to bottom, we were able to hand the keys back over to Beth. She was totally overjoyed at the job that we did. After we finished you couldn’t even tell that such tragedy had occurred there and that’s exactly what she needed.
After we were done with the job we were on our way out of town and stopped to fill up for gas when we bumped into a member of the deceased man’s church. She had noticed our signage and asked if we were there for the deceased. She had told us that the autopsy had revealed that the man’s festering wound had turned out to be bone cancer that had gone unattended for so long that it had eaten away his skull. The only thing separating the man’s brain from the outside elements was scalp and hair.
We were so glad that Beth called us because nobody except trained professionals should attempt to clean up a crime or accident scene. Dangerous pathogens can be found in blood and various other bodily fluids that could cause a significant risk to someone if not cleaned properly. We are a trained company and always adhere to OSHA guidelines and use EPA graded hospital cleansers and disinfectants.
