Pretoria - A wheelie dustbin left uncollected for over three weeks led to the realisation that something was amiss at a home in Moreleta Park.
Neighbours realised that they had not seen the man who lived there for a while, and were then alerted by a bad smell that something could be very wrong.
“It’s a dustbin. Nobody really notices things like that and it took me three weeks to realise (something was amiss),” Eulalia de Sa said. She described the smell that came from the house as being thick and said it was stuck in her mind.
She said the man who lived there and whose name was either “Diaan” or “Liaan”, cut a solitary figure and rarely had visitors.
She said on Tuesday, her gardener was greeted by a stench while he was trimming a tree close to the neighbour’s home.
She suggested he get a ladder and look over the wall, and said he was startled by what he saw.
“He said there were flies by the windows, most of which were dead; the lights were on but it didn’t seem like anybody was home,” she said.
After calling a local security company she called the police. “They called an ambulance, while more police officers arrived,” De Sa said.
She said police and emergency service personnel had to lift the electrical gate from its rail to gain access to the house. After entering the house, police found the decomposing body of the man, in the kitchen.
Police spokeswoman Captain Colette Weilbach said an inquest docket had been opened, but dismissed foul play.
Pretoria News