Antwerp police discover body of man in his sixties “who may have died at home a year ago”
The body of a man in his sixties, who is believed to have died a year ago, has been found at a property in Antwerp daily Gazet van Antwerpen reports. Police later confirmed the news. The man died a natural death. It appears this a harrowing case of a fellow human being experiencing extreme loneliness.
Police made the sad discovery last week at a property on the Amerikalei. The neighbourhood's police officer had gone to the property with a bailiff to seize the man's belongings after he had not paid any bills for months.
Once inside, they discovered that the letterbox was bulging with unread mail. They then found the man's body in a room on the first floor. Immediately it was clear that he had been dead for quite some time. The exact time of death could no longer be determined, but presumably the body had been lying there for a year.
A police doctor attended the scene and was able to establish that it was a natural death. After all this time, the exact cause of death could not be determined, but there were no suspicious circumstances.
A neighbour, Dirk Dielen, who has his legal practice next to the property, was stunned by the news. "He was a withdrawn fellow. Over five or six years, I possibly met him two or three times, just for a minute at the door. But he was friendly, amiable and quiet. I hadn't seen him for a long time, though. I had mentioned this to the police. The local Bobbie couldn’t find him either."
Then last week, a passerby told Dielen that police were at the man's front door. "I came outside and the officers told me a body had been found. The man’s car had been discovered a few hundred metres away. I didn't even know he had a car. He did go abroad a lot, I knew that!"