This time the body was of a man known to very few in his North Mulberry Street neighborhood.


A first-floor neighbor in the three-apartment building in the 200 block of North Mulberry Street said through his door Saturday evening that he called police around 4 a.m. because a large swarm of flies was covering the ceiling and hallway of the building.


The man, who declined to be identified, said he knew who the man was, but never talked to him.


Police and the coroner arrived to find the mummified man in his third-floor apartment.


Saturday evening, the window of the apartment remained open. Neighbors identified the man, but the Sunday News is withholding his name because relatives had not been notified, according to city police.


Police said the man was believed to be in his early to mid-50s.


On Oct. 21, Suie Bear, 90, who lived with her son, Gale, 55, in the 900 block of Union Street, was found in a decomposed state under a blanket on her bedroom floor after a family friend went to check on Gale because a “planned contact” had been missed.


The friend called 911, and police and the coroner arrived to find Gale Bear emaciated and his mother dead. She had been dead for three months.


Lancaster County Coroner Dr. G. Gary Kirchner said Saturday that it will be hard to determine how long the most recent victim has been dead.


“There is not much information when the body is that decomposed. The amount of time that takes depends on the temperature in the room and the size of the person before he died,” he said.


A lot of the forensic investigation is determined by toxicology work, but Kirchner said since the body no longer has any fluids, those tests are moot.


“When someone dies and rigor [mortis] sets in, we can pinpoint the timing. But after that, there is no way to tell,” he said.


An autopsy is pending, but police don’t suspect foul play. Ernest Dickerson, who lives in the 200 block of North Mulberry Street, said Saturday that the man was very friendly.


“He had just gotten out of the hospital, so I helped him out,” he said. “He would sit on the stoop with me and drink beer.”


Dickerson, the only neighbor to know anything about the man, said the dead man had been in the hospital for more than a month, and Dickerson figured he was still there.


He had been a Marine, Dickerson thinks, and did not work. City police said the man was a patient at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Lebanon.


“We used to see him every day, but we haven’t seen him in quite a while,” Dickerson said.


“It’s tragic no one cares,” said Kirchner. “Some big cities have a COW, or check-on-welfare, programs. We should have one of those.


“Meals on Wheels does this, but we need to expand it. This shouldn’t happen.”



E-mail Cris Foehlinger at cfoehlinger@lnpnews.com.

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