Authorities are investigating after a call from a concerned pizza delivery driver led to the discovery of an immobile man living with his decaying mother’s body in a filthy home in Salem, New Hampshire, officials said.
Officers entering the home on Brookedale Road Wednesday afternoon were greeted by a foul odor and flies before discovering a dead woman in her 80s, according to Attorney General Gordon MacDonald.
Neighbors and friends say they hadn’t seen the woman, whose name has not been released, in more than a year and a half. They say she lived in the home with her son, who is in his 60s.
Jack Johnson of Romano’s Pizza says the woman’s son is a regular customer but that the driver decided to call police after the man’s orders became “more erratic and a little larger.”
“From pizza to this” – Romano’s Pizza worker alerts police to Salem, NH home. Woman’s body found inside. @7News pic.twitter.com/PSffStAtEP
— Kim Lucey (@KimLucey) August 16, 2018
“Over the past few weeks, past week-and-a-half or so, his order became a little more erratic, a little larger,” he said. “He would order things he had never ordered before and he was pretty consistent about what he got. When our driver got there he asked him to bring the food to a window instead of the door and that raised some alarms.”
The driver noticed the man had blood on his body and that there was a strong odor coming from inside the house, according to Johnson.
Authorities believe the woman had been dead for a while. A radio dispatch indicated that police knew of an ongoing hoarding situation at the home.
Friends say her son had health issues and at times had trouble walking.
“He was totally immobile,” Brianna Avallone said. “The only way that (first responders) could get him out of the house was by cutting the hole in the front of the house and carrying him out. He was in the chair that was in one of the dens in the house.”
The home has since been boarded up and roped off with crime scene tape.
An investigation into the woman’s death is ongoing.
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