Man shoots himself after living with corpse

HOUSTON (AP) — Authorities continued Sunday to investigate why a man fatally shot himself just before deputies entered his home to discover he had been living with a corpse for months.

Neighbors contacted the Harris County sheriff’s office Saturday night because they were concerned they hadn’t seen one of the men living in the home in months, said Deputy Thomas Gilliland, a spokesman for the agency.

At the west Houston house, deputies “did notice that there were a lot of flies and a bad smell on one side of the house,” Gilliland said.

After entering the home, deputies heard a gunshot and found the body of a man with a self-inflicted gunshot wound, Gilliland said.

“In another adjoining bedroom, they also found the body of a man in a serious state of decomposition,” Gilliland said, citing a time frame of at least several months.

He said an autopsy was scheduled on the decomposed body.

Investigators believe the two men lived together, but said they were trying to find out other details about their relationship.

Both men would be in their sixties. Their names have not been released by authorities.