Texas man shoots himself at home; police find a severely decomposed body in the next room

Harris County, Texas, police were shocked to find two bodies at a home, where they conducted a wellness check Saturday.

The first body belonged to an unidentified 63-year-old man who shot himself as police entered a Houston-area home around 8 p.m. Saturday, Harris County Deputy Chief Thomas Gilliand said on Twitter. The other body reportedly belonged to a 64-year-old man who had been dead for “several months”.

A neighbor at the crime scene reportedly called police around 6:30 p.m. to say that it had been months since he saw someone enter the house next door. When deputies arrived, they noticed a foul odor and saw flies buzzing around the property.

“When they got into the house they heard a shot,” Gilliand said.

Inside the house, they found a recently murdered man with a self-inflicted gunshot wound in a bedroom and a “severely decomposed” corpse in an adjacent room. A forensic examination will attempt to reveal the latter’s cause of death. Police said both men appeared to live at the house at 16800 Kilwinning Dr.

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after services, a nationwide company that specializes in crime scene cleanup, says human decomposition begins immediately after death, though factors such as climate, shelter, and immersion all factor into the appropriateness of that process. An unburied body vulnerable to flies and bacteria will generally decompose faster.