Tragic! Starved to Death for Two Months, Nobody Knew, the Mother and Son’s Corpses Became Rotten

From the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum here, on the Front Page Sections, translated…

From the Houli District of Taichung, the woman, Lee is blind, hard of hearing, and mute, her son has signs of autism and bipolar, the two of them lived together, they were having a difficult life.  In the past two months, Lee was suspected of locking herself in her bedroom and attempting suicide, the mother couldn’t find the son, and starved to death; the mother and son died for almost two months, and nobody knew, until yesterday, someone found them.

The police investigated, that because the Lees failed to pay their utilities bill the Taipower Company had asked them again and again, but didn’t get any replies, that yesterday, as they sent a technician, to uninstall the electricity meters, he’d seen the seventy-two year old woman, lying dead in the house, reported to the police.  The police called on the fire department to break down the doors, found that the forty-seven year-old Lee was lying dead in bed.  Both their bodies had rotted away, without apparent external injuries, a note wasn’t discovered.

The police closed up the scene to examine the evidence, there was no damages on the brick doors, there weren’t signs of a struggle either, they’d suspected, that Lee’s autism had gotten the best of him, felt too much strain in caring for his mother, and locked himself inside his bedroom, and ended up, dying; the mother couldn’t find the son, managed to finish up all the food in the house, then, starved to death.  The coroner’s examined the body with the district attorney, and they ruled out external forces causing the deaths, they will autopsy the bodies to determine the precise cause of death.

Lee hadn’t paid their water bills of $358N.T.s for four months, there was a slip on the doors, pushing for payments; the mailbox was filled up with mails, nobody was there to sign for the certified deliveries, and the post office slipped a notice for pickup for Lee to head to the local post offices.

Awhile ago, the neighbors, as they’d passed through the Lee’s residence, smelled something rancid, thought that it was the fertilizers, used in the nearby plantations, didn’t suspect anything; the mail carrier couldn’t find anybody to sign for the mails, the water company sent someone to uninstall the water meters, and they’d not discovered anything, until yesterday, when the technician from Taipower went to uninstall the electricity meter, that, was when he’d discovered their bodies.

Their neighbor, Wang told, that the Lees are not social with anybody, the son would go out to work during the daytime, and the neighbors had made visit to the mother, and she was afraid of them, kept banging on the table, to get them to get out of the house; at the start of September, one of the neighbors saw Lee’s mother head outside, but she’d not picked up her government assistance money this October.  The mother and son pair weren’t seen for days, and someone in the neighborhood had told the police, but, nobody checked up on them.

Lee’s deceased husband worked in the army, the Veteran Services Unit in Taichung said, that the Lees were poor, that in June, they’d sent someone over, to give them some money, that the person who’d made the house visit didn’t see anything wrong.

And so, this is another tragic tale of how people got neglected, and forgotten by the rest of the world, had someone shown a bit more care, a little more concern to the family, maybe, it wouldn’t have, ended this way, but nobody had!