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Police find body of man dead for more than a year inside home

ELLENWOOD, Ga. — Police say the body of a man found in a home may have been there for a year.

DeKalb police were called to a home in  Ellenwood, Georgia, on Monday night and found the bones of a 48-year-old man in a bedroom.

Neighbors said the original owners of the home died a decade ago and the house was left to their children.

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A neighbor, who did not want to be identified, said two sisters brought their disabled brother to live at the home more than four years ago.

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

He said for an unknown reason, the sisters stopped coming by about three years ago. The neighbor assumed the man had moved out.

“We do have to talk to the family and see exactly what happened with this person. It is believed he moved in after the parents died,” DeKalb police spokeswoman Shiera Campbell said.

The neighbor said he called a number the family gave him when a tree fell on the house a year ago, but no one ever returned his calls.

“They didn’t come back anymore to bring him any food or watch after him or call me and ask me to, you know, look out for the house. A tree fell on it and they never said anything else. They just locked the house up and that’s it,” the neighbor said.

DeKalb police were called after a homeless man allegedly burglarized the home.

A police report shows code enforcement had been at the home about three weeks ago, but a spokesman said they did not go onto the property or inside the house.

The medical examiner said it could take months to positively identify the body and they may never know how he died. An anthropologist may have to be brought into examine the bones.