How my neighbor could have been dead for more than two years without anyone finding her

Audrey has lived since 2018 in Lord’s Court, a modern three-story building in Peckham, a neighborhood in south London. She vividly remembers the day the police broke into the apartment across the street.

“I knew as soon as they opened the door that something bad had happened. It showed in their faces,” says Audrey.

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Inside the tiny one-room apartment, police found the remains of Sheila Seleoane, a 58-year-old medical secretary. She was little more than a skeleton, dressed in blue and white pajamas. The police did not consider his death suspicious.

In the fridge, a gelatin and cream dessert revealed how long her body had been there: it had expired two and a half years ago.

To Sheila’s neighbors, it had been obvious for a long time that something was not right.

Weeks after Sheila’s estimated date of death – August 2019 – Chantel, who lives downstairs, had to change a light bulb in her apartment. When she removed the old one, a bunch of worms fell from the ceiling. In the weeks that followed, the problem worsened.

“They appeared in the room, the living room and the bathroom,” he recalls. “You’d sit on the couch and after a while you’d see one squashed. It was like living inside a horror movie.”

Chantel says she called Peabody—the nonprofit that runs this and other low-cost apartments for those who can’t afford market-rate rent—but they told her they weren’t dealing with the worm problem.

“It’s rReally very sad that someone can be (dead) in your apartment for so long and no one can find them.no one makes an effort to get in touch,” he says.

alarm between neighbors

Chantel was not the only neighbor to express concern in the weeks and months that followed. Audrey remembers coming back from a work trip and smelling awful, like death, when she took the elevator to the third floor.

“It broke me down,” he says. “It was horrible”.

An independent report concluded that there were multiple “missed opportunities” to find Sheila’s body sooner.

Other neighbors on the same floor say that they put towels and sheets under their doors to prevent the putrid smell from entering their houses.

“We couldn’t sleep, we couldn’t even eat, because the smell was very, very bad,” says Donatus Okeke, who lives in the same building with his wife Evelyn and their three children.

It was obvious something was up with Sheila. Her letters were piling up in her mailbox.

Evelyn says that called Peabody many times. Lyesha, another neighbor on the same floor, also did it. She “kept calling telling them there was a smell of death and no one came.”

Audrey says that the neighbors did everything they could to raise the alarm, but that Peabody assured them that the case would be investigated.

The association told the BBC it was “devastated by what happened to Sheila”, and that they were “open, honest and transparent about what had gone wrong”.

missed opportunities

Why then was Sheila’s body not discovered until February 2022?

After Sheila died, her rent went unpaid. Peabody sent letters, emails and left voicemails, but he didn’t come to see what was going on, even though Sheila had always paid her rent since she moved in in 2014.

Without – of course – consulting Sheila, Peabody began collecting rent through a government scheme that helps those who are struggling to pay rent.

Then, in April 2020, the association had to verify the gas installation, a mandatory annual procedure that owners must do. When the contractors couldn’t get into the apartment, Peabody sent Sheila a series of letters and, getting no response, opted to cut off her supply.

Sheila worked for an agency, so it’s likely she didn’t have a fixed workplace or colleagues.

A year after her death, and after receiving numerous complaints from neighbors, Peabody asked the police to come to Sheila’s apartment. But when the police knocked on the door and received no response, he withdrew, saying that he did not have sufficient reason to break it down.

It would be another 16 months until Sheila’s body was found.

Until that moment, despite the fact that the woman had stopped paying the rent, that she had not responded to the appointment for the gas check, nor to the many letters and emails that had been sent to her, no one at Peabody believed that it was necessary to send to a person from the association to the department to see what had happened to him.

An independent report commissioned by Peabody after Sheila was found concluded that missed “multiple opportunities” to find his body sooner.

He further says that the Work style Peabody (where different parts of the organization tend not to share information) made all reports from neighbors and things like the failed attempt to check the gas installation evaluated in isolation.

The organization “appears not to have seen the alerts, listened to the neighbors, or made a connection between it all,” the report concludes, describing Peabody as a bureaucratic organization driven by the goal of meet goals without really considering their customers.

Isolation

But another important factor that explains why Sheila wasn’t found sooner is how isolated she was.

A video of his funeral shows only a person in the middle of an empty crematorium: her estranged half-brother Viktor, who said he hadn’t spoken to her in years. Another person, a Peabody representative, showed up a little later.

No other relative. No friend.

Sheila worked for an agency, so it’s likely she didn’t have a fixed workplace or colleagues.

An internet search reveals that he had a limited social media presence. A 2012 Facebook post shows that he was looking for an old school friend with whom he had lost contact.

“I don’t remember your address and I made the mistake of not writing it down,” he wrote. Nobody answered.

The neighbors are still traumatized by what happened.

The National Statistics Office points out that the 7% of British adults always or often feel lonelyand the 25% feel lonely at least part of the time.

Some scientific studies indicate that loneliness can increase the chances of a early death. We don’t know how Sheila died, but her medical records indicate various health complications.

Her neighbors explain that she was “reserved” and “shy” but friendly. They greeted each other when they passed each other on the stairs, but they didn’t know her.

“This made me see my neighbors and my community in a different way,” says Audrey. “We should take care of others.”

Trauma

From Peabody they indicated in a statement that they had not done enough to understand what had happened in the building, they apologized to the neighbors, and announced that they are trying to change their practices.

Even so, the trauma of what happened still affects the residents of Lord’s Court, who are thinking of suing for damages for their experience.

Audrey says that living there brings back horrible memories of those two and a half years living with a dead body a few feet away, and her many attempts to warn Peabody of the situation.

Sheila’s neighbors in Lord’s Court say she was “reserved” and “shy” but friendly.

“I always wondered what was going on behind that door”point.

As soon as they found Sheila, Audrey asked Peabody to move to another apartment. But, after a year, they have not found a suitable place for her.

“They don’t know the sleepless nights we spent after this and how it affected us,” he says. “It still affects me every time I leave the house: I see Sheila’s apartment and I’m constantly reminded of what happened there.”

Evelyn and her family are also trying to move. Ever since Sheila’s body was discovered, Evelyn’s daughter (Chialuzue, 12) has been having trouble sleeping and having trouble at school. She says it’s because she realized they lived with a dead body nearby for so long.

“They don’t take care of us. They don’t care about us. They only care about money and nothing else,” he says.

Peabody argues that there is a severe shortage of social housing in London, but that they would see what other support they could offer Audrey and Evelyn.

Source: Elcomercio