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The pungent odor of decay that Mark Means endured for a month seems like punishment enough for not reporting his roommate's death.
Mark Means said his housemate was asleep. (Photo: Oakland County Sheriff's Office)
Still, the Oakland County resident who endured that stench now also faces a misdemeanor criminal charge, Fox 2 News relates:
Investigators ruled out foul play in the death, blaming an accident due to a bathtub fall.
Mark Alan Means, 58, is being held in the Oakland County Jail on a $5,000 cash, surety, or 10 percent bond for failure to report a deceased person. As a condition of the bond, the judge said Means is not allowed to go back to live in the [Independence Township] home on Caberfae Trail. ...
Michael Leroy Wagner, 76, was discovered [last] Tuesday by deputies who were sent to the home on a welfare check. ... He is believed to have fallen on March 7 and died March 10.
Means, a housemate since 2015, said he "realized it was about time to report it to authorities," the Oakland County Sheriff's Office tells the station. Yet he initially told deputies Wagner was asleep.
Yes, reality sometimes resembles a horror movie.
Earlier article, April 6:
Two Oakland deputies making a late-night personal safety check insisted on verifying what they were told when the door opened at an Independence Township home.
(Photo: Oakland County Sheriff's Office)
That was a good call, as The Detroit News recounts:
Deputies from the Independence Township substation responded to a home in the 7800 block of Caberfae Trail about 2:10 a.m. Tuesday to check the welfare of an adult male. Attempts to contact the listed homeowner had been unsuccessful.
Deputies spoke with an adult male resident at the address who said the homeowner was sleeping in a bedroom. Deputies told the man the homeowner's welfare needed to be confirmed and were let inside the residence, where the homeowner was located dead in a bathroom.
The deceased 76-year-old man "apparently had been dead in his home for about a month," the paper adds.
The resident ... was taken to the township substation to be interviewed by detectives.
An autopsy is next to determine if the death was natural. For now, unsurprisingly, the suburban sheriff's department classifies it as suspicious.
