Many questions in DeKalb after man dies and no one notices

DeKalb County authorities are trying to determine how a skeleton went apparently unnoticed for perhaps a year or two in an Ellenwood home.

Police suspect the remains belong to a man who lived alone in the house, though definitively identifying the bones is proving difficult. The remains are being sent to an FBI facility in Quantico, Virginia, for identification through DNA, said Mark Anglin, chief investigator at the DeKalb County Medical Examiner’s Office.

The cause of death will be determined in DeKalb. The preliminary appearance is that it was a natural death, Anglin said.

DeKalb police responded to the home on Telstar Drive on Monday after a homeless man who’d been scavenging the property saw the skeleton. It could be seen through the window, lying on the bed, according to a police report.

Neighbors told Channel 2 Action News the man was disabled and his two sisters moved him in about four years ago. Their parents had owned the home but died years earlier.

Public records suggest the name of a man who has two sisters, dead parents and lived at the address, but the Atlanta Journal-Constitution isn’t releasing the name because police haven’t confirmed it’s the same man they suspect.

Efforts to reach said sisters and other family were unsuccessful Wednesday.

Neighbors told police they couldn’t recall seeing the man in the past two years.

He used to step outside every once in a while.

His sisters would come check on him.

“They would come twice a week, bring his food, take the trash out to the street and bring the trash cans back,” a neighbor told Channel 2.

Last year, a tree fell on the house. A neighbor called the sisters to report the damage but the neighbor doesn’t think they ever came to the house after that, police said.

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