The somewhat rusty mailbox overflowing with propaganda leaflets reveals that no one has collected its contents for many days. A latex glove in the front yard, next to the small, somewhat neglected garden, and the unmistakable police tape on the door of number 97 Sabine de Betherlot Street, in the Argana Alta neighborhood, say that something bad has happened in the house. And inside, the lifeless body of a man had been there for more than two weeks.
His young neighbor Adrián Abeijón, who has lived in the neighborhood with his family for three months, was the one who alerted the emergency services this Sunday. His house is door to door with that of the deceased, and although he did not know him, "I didn't even know his name," he clarifies, he was surprised not to see him pass by his house for more than 20 days. "I smelled something and looked out (into the patio). It smelled quite a bit," he explains. This Sunday around noon, the Police, the firefighters and 112, according to other neighbors on the same street, occupied the road. Agents of the Local Police of Arrecife jumped over a wall of the house and entered.
The lifeless body of the resident of the house, V.H., was found lying face up, whose body was in an advanced state of decomposition. "He could have been dead for about 17 or 20 days, the time the neighbors estimate they hadn't seen him," reported the commissioner of the National Police, José Antonio Fernández García Camacho.
According to a first assessment by the forensic doctor, the death may have been due to a "natural death," explained the commissioner, who also reported that an autopsy was scheduled to be performed on the body this Monday, the results of which would confirm the first forensic assessment. The commissioner also pointed out that several bottles of liquor were found in the room where the body was found, the living room of the house according to information provided by the Local Police.
The neighbors of the adjoining houses are still shocked. "It has been a very unpleasant thing," says one of the neighbors, who also recalls that he was not an old man. She assures that he was 46 years old, that he was from the Peninsula, although he had been in Lanzarote for many years and that he was separated. His neighbor knew him little, but explains that, although he lived alone, he had two children in their twenties. "They came to visit him from time to time," she recalls. Another neighbor comments that the deceased had not had a good time. "He had had problems with alcohol and was recovering."
