My girlfriend and I went to do a welfare check on a friend and found her dead on the couch

@ABA180
@ColoradoTJ
@Just_A_Guy
@shakerhood
@steelcity2

Some of you may remember that my girlfriend's birth mother died unexpectedly just before Valentine's day, and was not found for about five days. She had two small elderly dogs. We did not find the body in the case of Amanda's mother, but the whole experience is what influenced us to hop in my truck and drive to Emily's condo in a severe thunderstorm. Hannah is almost 10, and while we had a feeling something bad had happened to Emily, we knew Hannah would still be fine and wanted to save her.

Anyway, Amanda called the Chester County Coroner this morning and the woman she talked to said she'd talk to her supervisor. It has been about 13 weeks since the autopsy was performed, and we were told 8 to 12 weeks until the results come back. We were at our friend Richard's property picking up some scrap when the morgue got back to Amanda, and they had the autopsy results...

Amanda's mother died of a heart attack, which was one of the theories that I had from the beginning. What shocked us both, especially Amanda, was that cocaine was found in her system. The cocaine had already metabolized, so there is no way to tell if there was fentanyl or anything else in it. Amanda didn't know that both powder cocaine and rock cocaine will come up as "cocaine" in a toxicology report until I told her, so it's pretty obvious that she was smoking crack not long before her death.

Barb had stents in her heart (in addition to her arteries, arm, clavicle, and leg]. but Amanda is not aware of her ever having had a heart attack prior to this one. Unfortunately, there is no way of telling if the cocaine was directly responsible for the heart attack.

Prior to this shocking revelation, the last time Amanda was aware of her mom having a relapse was in 2012. We have no idea when she started up again, but I do believe that the aforementioned neighbors were last aware of her using in October 2024. If the VA or her case manager had found out she was using, it would have been her third strike, and she would have been kicked out of her apartment. As per her neighbors, she had recently started smoking crack again in the last few months prior to her death as a means of easing the great amount of physical pain she was in.

Regardless of how long she'd been using crack again or how much she'd been using, she straight up lied to us. She would flip shit when friends posted pictures of beer they were drinking on Facebook, and would not allow alcohol in her apartment. She also criticized us if she heard we had more than one beer per social gathering, because she'd also been a raging alcoholic.

She hid the fact that she was using really well, and it came as an absolute shock to us that she'd been lying.

 

Addicts with an active addiction often criticize other for their actions, in order to draw suspicion away from themselves.
I wouldn't hold anything against the woman. It's all part of the addiction and symptoms.
The fact is, the woman is dead. There is absolutely nothing she can do to make anything right at this point. She is dead.

I think the best course of actin is to forgive and move on.
My her soul rest in peace.

 

Yup I remember the move and the trailer. Good that y'all were able to reconnect after. Sometimes people are better friends when they aren't around each other constantly, I have several that I could never live with

What TN said, and believe me I rationalized my own addiction like you wouldn't believe..and heard many others do the same with theirs.

Forgiveness isn't always for the forgiven, sometimes it's for the forgivee..if that makes sense.

 

@BkerChuck
@uurx

It has been pretty much exactly 22 days to the minute that a cop emerged from our friend Emily's condo and told me and Amanda that she was gone; I have recovered quite well, and Amanda is improving, but what I'm having trouble processing is that I actually found the dead body of someone I'd known for almost two decades. Unlike Amanda, I don't have PTSD from past experiences, so that's probably why I handled it better than did.

I've loved watching some pretty gruesome shows since I was still in middle school; I believe that I watched FBI Files for the first time in late 2002, when I was in 8th grade. I've also watched CSI, Dr. G: Medical Examiner, Untold Stories of the ER, The First 48, Criminal Minds, Crossing Jordan, Law & Order, the Chicago trifecta (Med, Fire, PD), and SWAT. The Sopranos also has some pretty nasty death scenes; I love those shows, not for the death but because they interesting.

My parents and my aunt and uncle took my cousins and me to see Body Worlds at the Franklin Institute in 2006; I was 16 (almost 17), as was my older cousin, and my younger cousin was almost 14. We all thought it was pretty cool.

As stated earlier, I went to an open casket funeral for the first time at the age of 18, when my grandfather died from lung cancer in November 2007. I knew that I my grandpa was very sick and going to die, and I knew that I was going to be seeing his body. My mom has always told me, including before we went to my grandpa's funeral, that I did not have to go up and view the body at an open casket if I felt uncomfortable doing so; I was a bit shocked at first walking through those doors and seeing my grandpa laid out, but it quickly passed. It didn't make me uncomfortable at all, and I even went right up to the casket and touch his hand. This was mostly because I wanted to say goodbye, but a decent amount of it also had to do with seeing what a dead body (outside of the Body Worlds exhibit) felt like. I also felt like it was my duty to sit in the front row with the rest of my family. I didn't cry once at either of the two viewings, or at the brief service that was held at the funeral home.

My parents and I had to euthanize one dog in December 2009, and another dog in July 2009. Both of those dogs literally died in my arms, and I cried more for them more than I did my grandpa. Both of them died peacefully and did not suffer, and when Mandy died in 2019, I knew what I was in for having experienced Molly's death less than a decade earlier.

The first time I saw a "fresh" body was in about November 2002, through the back window of my parents' van, and it was under a sheet. This was not long after we'd moved to Northern Virginia for my dad's new job at the Pentagon; I believe that it was a motorcycle accident, and the deceased had been the rider. As I said, he was under a sheet, and all I could see was the obvious shape of a body. I later read in the newspaper that the biker was like 37, but I can't remember if he'd rear-ended a car, or if a car had pulled out in front of him.

Then, there was Body Worlds in 2006...

From November 2007 to February 2024, I went to probably half a dozen open caskets...

A little after 8pm on May 3rd, Amanda realized that she hadn't heard from Emily in two days, and got this feeling that something was wrong when Emily wouldn't respond to texts; I called and texted her, and also got nothing. Looking back on it, I now realize I knew in the bottom of my heart that something was very wrong, but I didn't realize that it was literally dead wrong. I firmly believed that she was either asleep, or in some sort of medical distress that had rendered her unconscious or otherwise incapacitated, but still alive. When we were like a mile and a half from Emily's condo, I called Emily again and left a voicemail. We had crossed over County Line Road at that point but were still on 611, and when she didn't answer a second phone call, I knew something was up; I made a left onto Maple Avenue from 611, and gunned it. I have a dashcam in my truck, and even though I had the radio up fairly loud, you can hear that 2TR-FE screaming as I opened it up on Maple...



The last person to have contact with Emily was her ex-boyfriend Dennis, at about 9:42PM on Friday, May 2nd. We arrived at her condo around 8:36-8:37PM on Saturday, May 3rd; I called 911 at 8:40PM and first responders arrived at around 8:46. A firefighter kicked in the door a short time later, and the medics officially called Emily death at around 8:51PM.

The cop was the first to emerge from Emily's condo, and told us that she'd been gone for about a day. This was before we'd gotten ahold of Dennis and found about Emily's 9:42PM text to him on Friday.

Emily had phone chargers in both her bedroom and the living room; Emily was on the couch in the living room, but the cop told us he'd found her iPhone hooked up to the charger in her bedroom. Amanda lived with Emily for many years prior to us dating, and she knew Emily's behaviors, including sleep habits; Emily almost NEVER slept on the couch and preferred her bed.

Emily was in her pajamas (though unless she had work or had to drive somewhere for any reason, she almost always wore her PJs around the house, so this really means nothing), and she looked like she'd died in her sleep as opposed to having some sort of medical emergency and dropping dead. The TV was off, as were seemingly all of the lights in the condo. The only light I saw was the green LED from her Alexa. located on the table next to the couch. The fact that the TV was off was a pretty big clue; Emily was known to stay up fairly late watching TV. She also hated sleeping with the TV or any lights on (Amanda says Emily rarely fell asleep in front of the TV), so this tells us that she took a nap (probably as a result of not feeling well) and never woke up. The lights being off also don't really tell us anything because it means she could have passed when it was light out or dark out, since she prefers to sleep in the dark.

Amanda believes that she passed anywhere from 16 to 18 hours before we found her, which would mean somewhere between 2AM and 4AM, and she even suggested she could have passed as recently as 12PM. I initially believed that it was maybe 12 to 14 hours (6AM to 8AM) before we found her. It had been very warm the last few days, including on May 3rd, so Emily had the central A/C on in the condo; I did some research on the internet, and found that dying with the A/C on hastens the onset of rigor mortis but slows down decomposition.

The A/C being on, combined with the fact that we probably found Emily less than a day after she passed, resulted in a much less traumatic scene for me and Amanda. Having found a fairly recently deceased person does not bother in the slightest, at least in terms of how the body looked. What really gets to me is the fact that I knew this person for almost two decades, and that I was texting with her less than a week before she died. The detective who processed the scene lived across from Emily and knew her, so I can't imagine what he was going through; I honestly can't imagine what first responders go through from dealing with this shit on a daily basis, and having nothing but respect for them!

While we did see our friend dead on her couch, we only saw her through a window, and didn't realize she was dead until the first responders broke into her house and turned on the lights; I'd grabbed a sledgehammer from my garage, with the intention of using it to break into Emily's condo if the need arose. I informed the 911 dispatcher that I had the sledgehammer and asked if I should attempt to make entry. She told me that I would be well within my rights to break into the condo from a legal standpoint, but that she had a cop about two minutes away; I thought Emily was alive but unconscious at this point (as Amanda thought she'd seen her chest rise twice), so I decided to let the professionals break into the house. She was obviously past the point of help...

Another weird phenomenon is that when the lights were off, Emily seemed a lot further away from the window than she actually was. The blinds are fucked up and don't close properly, so that's how we were able to see inside. The only light was coming from my Tacoma's headlights and foglights, and the outside light at Emily's front door; Emily's Alexa also provided a miniscule amount of light. We thought she was asleep at first, but then we started banging on the door and the window, and realized something was wrong when she didn't wake up (my dashcam footage shows that we woke up the woman in the condo directly above Emily's). Emily's dog Hannah had been with her body, as if she was standing guard, when we showed up. She recognized our voices and came to the window, knowing that help had finally arrived.

As soon as the lights were turned on in the condo, I realized that my eyes were had been playing tricks on me and that Emily was much closer to the window. More importantly, looking back on it I subconsciously knew she was gone even though it hadn't been officially confirmed yet. As I have said before, it had been less than a day and the A/C was on so it wasn't gross, but Emily was very pale and something about her just seemed unnatural. Amanda worked in nursing homes before we started dating and had found many a recently deceased resident, and would later tell me that she knew Emily was gone just based on her appearance as well. One of the most telling clues Amanda noticed, and that I somehow didn't noticed, was when the cop assisted the paramedic by moving Emily's head, and it rolled to the side like a heavy rock. One of the guys saw me looking through the window and shut the blinds, and within a few minutes, the cop came out and told us she would gone; Amanda screamed and started crying, and all I could say was "Oh my God!" before walking back to the truck in absolute shock.

I know that my girlfriend and I went to do a welfare check on our friend and found her dead, and I know that I just attended her memorial service a week ago; I have been to numerous funerals, but in my mind, it feels like I haven't fully processed the fact that I found the body of the person who died this time (like I haven't put two and two together).

 

Now lets get back to my Grandpa's funeral back in 2007; I'd been to one funeral prior to my Grandpa's, in 2003 or 2004. My Aunt Annie is my mom's older sister and her husband, my Uncle Tommy is only related to me by marriage. Uncle Tommy's mother, who I only met a few times in my life, had died from lung cancer. Uncle Tommy, his father, and his brother had all served in the Army. As an honorably discharged veteran, Uncle Tommy's dad was able to be buried in Arlington Cemetery, and his wife was too. His wife predeceased him (he died somewhere in the range of 2013-2014), so she was buried first. She was cremated, so there was no body or casket.

My maternal grandfather died from complications relating to Alzheimer's 7 years before I was born, but I was very lucky growing up in the sense that I had the rest of my grandparents. My dad's parents divorced in the 1960s, and both remarried, leaving me with two sets of grandparents; I just saw this as a way to get more presents for my birthday and Christmas when I was younger, and didn't know the reason for the divorce until after my grandfather had died...

My paternal grandpa was "Pop-pop" and my paternal grandma is "Grammy". My cousins and I always called Pop-pop's second wife "Nana J" and Grammy's second husband "Mr. P". Not only is Grammy still alive, but both her mother and Pop-pop's mother were alive well in to the 21st century, with Pop-pop's mother even outliving him! Grammy's dad died in 2004 at the age 93, and I believe that Pop-pop's dad died in like 1999 (I don't remember how old he was or what year he died in, but it was BEFORE Pop-pop died in 2007). Pop-pop's mom died in like 2010...?

Grammy's mom died in 2012, aged either 91 or 98; Grammy is going to be 87 this September.

Nana J is still alive and is either 80 or about to turn 80. Mr. P passed away in April 2017, at the age of 93.

My maternal grandma died in January 2015, at the age of 88. All of my mom's grandparents and great grandparents died either before she was born or when she was still fairly young; none of my aunts, uncles, or cousins have died.

Grammy and Pop-pop had four kids between 1958 and 1961, and when Pop-pop remarried,

Going back to how I handled the illness and death of Pop-pop, I forget whether he was diagnosed in 2005 or 2006; I believe that it was in early 2006. He responded well to the chemotherapy for more than a year, but then it about October 2007 they discovered that it had spread to his liver and ended treatment. We knew he didn't have much time left, so we decided to have an "early Thanksgiving" on Saturday, November 4th.

With the exception of one aunt and uncle who lived in Florida and had to fly up, everyone lived in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, so arranging this was not hard. By this time, Pop-pop was confined to a hospital bed in the guestroom of his house. Honestly, I had been told there was a chance he could pass that night, so I was constantly going into the guestroom to make sure he was still alive. There were a couple times when I went in there and found him motionless, but then his stomach would rise, he would breathe, or he would make another noise that told me he was alive.

He was still all there mentally from what I could tell, but he was so weak that he slept most of the time and couldn't carry on a conversation. One trait of my autism is that I have a photographic memory. Shortly after I arrived with my parents, Aunt Tracey (Pop-pop and Nana J's daughter) told me that she wanted to take me into Pop-pop's room to "pick my brain" for family memories. That guestroom was tiny, but Aunt Tracey managed to cram a bunch of us in there, and I just started spouting off childhood memories from back in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Pop-pop had an above-ground pool installed in the backyard at some point in the 1980s, and my cousins and I had a lot of fun in that pool. The pool was old but in excellent shape, so at some point between about 1999 and 2004, Pop-pop opted to have it relined and gave it a whole new life. There was a wooden post next to the pool with a single floodlighted mounted to it. For some reason, it had a blue lens over the bulb; I don't know why, but I was obsessed with light fixtures for much of my childhood and it would make me happy to no end when it started to get dark and Pop-pop would turn on that floodlight just for me. I promptly brought Aunt Tracey to tears, and almost started crying myself, when I told this story.

Pop-pop only had four vehicles from the time I was born; 1986 Toyota pickup, 1995 Jeep Cherokee, 2003 GMC Envoy, and 2007 GMC Envoy. At the time I was born, Nana J had a 1987 Buick Century that was a lemon and that I have no memory of. The Buick was replaced with a 1991 Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight, which was replaced by a 1999 Oldsmobile Eighty-Eight. The second Oldsmobile started having problems around the time Pop-pop died, so she sold it and started driving the 2007 Envoy. When the lease was up on the Envoy, she gave that back and bought a new 2010 Hyundai Santa Fe. Just a couple years ago, she traded the Hyundai for a 2017 Kia Sportage, which she still has.

Anyway, the red 1986 Toyota pickup was purchased at an insurance auction in about 1989 by my Uncle Jeff. It had been hit in the rear, totaled by the previous owner's insurance company, and issued a salvage title. The bed was destroyed, but I do not believe it had any frame damage. It was a base model truck with a manual transmission and no A/C. I don't remember if Pop-pop decided to buy it before or after my uncle started customizing it, but that truck turned out beautiful, and he owned it for at least six years. My uncle put a new bed on it and installed A/C. He also added alloy wheels from an AMC Hornet, a power sliding rear window, a cassette stereo, and bucket seats. I rarely rode in that truck, but one time when we were visiting in probably 1993 or 1994, Pop-pop and my dad went to get pizza; I wanted to go too. Pop-pop was a lieutenant with the local police department, and he wasn't going to get grief for letting his grandson ride on his dad's lap, so that's exactly what I did; I also shared this story...

At one point during the "early Thanksgiving" visit, I was alone with my Pop-pop in the guestroom. I just started crying and went to my knees on the floor next to his bed. If Pop-pop was awake, which I don't think he was, then I don't think he was conscious enough to realize what was going on. The door was open ever so slightly, and my Uncle Kenny happened to walk by. He saw that I was crying, immediately came in, and embraced me in a big hug.

Once I'd calmed down a bit, Uncle Kenny stood up and casually let one rip; I was like "Did you just fart?"

He said that he had, and even though I was laughing uncontrollably, I said something along the lines of "Isn't that kind of disrespectful, given the current situation?"

Uncle Kenny gestured to my dozing grandfather and was like "Who do you think taught us 'Pull my finger' when we were kids?"

I started laughing even harder; Uncle Kenny to this day still knows how to cheer me up!

Pop-pop was mentally there for the most part, but because of the amount of painkillers and other medications he was on, he was a bit confused and not always aware of what was going on. The guestroom he was in is located right next to the kitchen, which was getting a workout due to us having an early Thanksgiving. It was November, so the heat was probably on, and that house got rather toasty. Pop-pop and Nana J's house is a small brick rancher built in the late 1940s, so it warmed up fast. There's also a possibility that Nana J may have slightly burned something, which contributed to Pop-pop freaking out and thinking that the house was on fire; Aunt Tracey became upset and started crying, and it took Uncle Kenny and me going into Pop-pop's room and convincing him that everybody was safe and the house was not on fire.

Despite the false alarm, our last day with Pop-pop was a great one. At one point, my dad and uncles used redneck ingenuity to give Pop-pop some beer. When asked if he wanted a beer, he was able to nod his head, but he was too weak to raise his head; Nana J had a bunch of these stick things with sponges at the end that were used to moisten Pop-pop's lips. One of my uncles poured a beer in a cup, and used the sponge stick to dab it onto Pop-pop's lips.



It was a great night, but we never forgot why we decided to have Thanksgiving early. We knew Pop-pop would be gone soon. However, I was shocked when I came downstairs less than 24 hours after last seeing Pop-pop, and being told by my dad that he had passed away.

Uncle Kenny and Aunt Sylvia, who live in Florida, came in the door at their house only to get a call that Pop-pop had died and were on a plane back to New Jersey less than a day later. The viewings were on November 8th, and the actual funeral was on November 9th...

 

@ABA180
@ColoradoTJ
@shakerhood
@steelcity2
@TnShooter

I had cried a bit back in October when my parents told me that the cancer had spread to Pop-pop's liver, I had cried at Pop-pop's bedside the last time I'd seen him alive, and I cried when my dad told me that he had passed away. However, I kept my composure until very end of the funeral service...

My Aunt Jenn started crying at one point, I forget whether it was during one of the viewings on Thursday or on Friday morning before we loaded his casket into the hearse, and I just embraced her and let sob it out.

My cousins Lanae and Sara, at the time aged 18 and 15 respectively (the same ones I went to Body Worlds with back in 2006), both started crying shortly before we left the funeral home on Friday; I have always towered over my cousins, and the only thing I could think to do was grab both of them in this big bear hug and squeeze them. They cried into my shoulders, but I managed to keep my composure.

I was not originally supposed to be a pallbearer, but one of the guys originally supposed to be a pallbearer had something come up; I overheard Nana J talking about this with another family friend. In typical Aspie fashion, I interrupted the conversation and blurted out "I'll be a pallbearer!" if I remember correctly.

Nana J had not originally wanted any family to pallbearers, but my dad and a few other relatives loved the idea and she relented; I helped load Pop-pop's casket into the hearse and unload it at the cemetery. I held it together for the service at the cemetery, but at the very end they start playing taps and I lost it. My mom saw that I was crying, and also started crying because she hated seeing me in pain. At point I was leaning against my parents' minivan, head on the window, just bawling.

I never had a bad relationship with Pop-pop, ever. However, because my dad was in the Navy, for all but 9 of the first nearly 19 years of my life we didn't live close enough to visit him and Nana J regularly. I was born in California in 1989. We lived in Pennsylvania, about an hour from Pop-pop, from 1990 to 1996. We moved back to California in 1996 and lived there until 1998, Virginia Beach from 1998 to 2000, Washington state from 2000 to 2002, and Northern Virginia from 2002 to 2005. We finally moved back to Pennsylvania in 2005 and were an hour from Pop-pop once again, but he was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2006 and died before the end of 2007. I graduated high school five months before he died, and didn't get my driver's license until three and a half years after he died. There were two memorial runs in his honor, in 2008 and 2009 respectively on the anniversary of his death, in which the proceeds were donated to cancer research. My parents and I went to both of these; I still close with Nana J and Aunt Tracey, and Nana J had the honor of being my first grandparent to meet Amanda. Now, my family has basically accepted Amanda as one of their own and Amanda has been to at least three family gatherings at Nana J's house.

I am a bit embarrassed to say that in the nearly 18 years since Pop-pop passed, I have not visited his resting place once (he was interred in a mausoleum, with a space for Nana J when her time comes). Granted, the cemetery is more than an hour from my house and not exactly in an area that I would want to visit otherwise, but I still feel kind of bad. My maternal grandparents are both buried at a church cemetery in Connecticut, and while I drove through Connecticut on my way up to Massachusetts in 2022, I haven't been to my grandparents' resting place since the funeral back in 2015.

Should I feel bad about this?!?! It's not exactly easy to just hop in my truck and drive up to Connecticut, but I am considering driving to visit Pop-pop in New Brunswick in the near future...

 

No. Not at all.
Not unless you made some kind of promise to them when they were alive, that'd you visit their graveside.

Now, at the risk of sounding uncompassionate or what ever.
IF I were to be buried, and my family visited my graveside, they be wasting their time.
They aren't going to be able to see me. and They aren't going to be able to talk to me.
I wont even be there myself.

I plan on doing a whole lot of traveling. And a lot of trout fishing when I die.
I'm going ghost my dead ass to all the places I never got to go to when I was a live.
I have no intentions of hanging around a "graveside"......

I guess, my advice is......
Visit people as much as you can while they are alive. (not dead)

 

You guys make a lot of sense.

Now, with regards to Emily, why am I having so much trouble putting the events together? It's like my mind doesn't realize that the dead body Amanda and I found three weeks ago is the same person who memorial service we attended a week ago...

 

Same here. I want mine poured in a trout stream.
My mother and brother both know. And where to pour them.....

 

Unfortunately, it is now illegal to dump ashes just anywhere, and where it is legal to do so I believe you have to get a permit...

 

I don't know buddy.
We all deal with things differently.

One of my best friends, who is now dead, told me something I will always remember.

He said,

"People are going to come and go in your life.
Some will be alive when they leave. Other will be dead.
But you have to hold your head up, and go on with your life.
You can't live in the life of someone that's gone."

He died in 2017.
Sure I miss they guy.
But he's gone......Just like he said.

And I moved on. Just like he'd want me to......

 

In that case, I'll just do it myself........
Geez......The things a dead guy has to do.

On second though, It would be kind of funny to call ahead and ask for "the permit" to pour my own ashes out.
That would be an awkward, but funny to me, conversation.

 

I honestly think that I'm still in shock; I can still remember the day I met Emily in high school back in 2006. A couple months ago, Amanda and I also surmised that Emily would be dead before 50 if she continued on the path she was on. We knew she was unhealthy, but we didn't she'd be dead before 40, and we certainly didn't we'd be the ones who found her.

 

I have the "organ donor" designation on my driver's license, and if my organs are still viable when I die, then I want them donated to somebody who could use them; I want my brain donated to science, and then I want to be cremated. Emily was an organ donor too, but organs are only viable if the deceased is put on life support immediately after death, and Emily passed at least 12 hours before we found her.

 

Well, someone had to find her.
At least it was you all. And not here mother of father a week later.
I couldn't imagine finding my own child dead.
And even worse, once they started decomposing.

Maybe it was a blessing disguise that you all found her?

 

I have had mine checked since I got them.
I'm with you, let someone else that needs them, have them.

 

Intense, I felt like just read a book.
Life as we know it brings heart break and love that only the one can experience.
I feel her soil rests in peace. We make our own choices and some don't know or have the choice. Only the one knows at the time.

Rip Emily

And thx for share so that she is known now by all that have taken to read this short but long story of your life.

 

Oh, it totally was, and it was also a blessing that Emily had the A/C on in the condo. Emily's mother lives in Oregon, so she wouldn't have been the one to find her. Emily's dad lives like 20 minutes away, and owns the condo that Emily was living in, so he has a key. He and Emily had gotten into an argument a couple days before she died and Emily wasn't speaking to him apparently. Emily's dad was about to fly out to Florida so he could take care of his sister who'd had knee replacement surgery. There is a possibility that one Emily's friends would checked up on her, but that probably would have been on Sunday or Monday. The body was not decomposed (but as soon as the lights came on it was easy to tell she was dead), and I was told that there was no smell inside the condo; I took one step inside before the cop told me to wait outside. Amanda's mother was in her apartment for about five days with the heat on, and we were told that the distinctive death smell was obvious as soon as the door was kicked in. However, we were at the apartment two days after she was found and there was no smell; I found some dried blood on the floor near where her body was found that more or may not have been hers, but a layperson would never know that somebody died there and sat for five days.

Emily probably died while Amanda and I were still asleep in the wee hours of Saturday morning, and we probably wouldn't have been able to help her unless we'd been at her place on Friday night. No doubt, if one of Emily's other friends hadn't found her by Monday, it could have been up to a week before Emily was found and her dad probably would have been the one to discover her. With the A/C on, I'd say that finding Emily after Tuesday would have been quite traumatic for whoever found her; I seriously thought she was asleep until I started banging on the window and she wouldn't wake up, and then I thought she was just unconscious until the lights came on.

Hannah, Emily's dog who we took in, had food and water; I've heard of dogs surviving by drinking out of the toilet and eating garbage when their owner passes away and there is no other food or water. I've also unfortunately heard of dogs eating the bodies of their owners if left long enough. The other thing you've got to factor is that while Hannah is healthy, she's almost ten years old. Barb (Amanda's mother who died) had two small dogs, the 16-year old mother and her 13-year old son, who survived five days locked in the apartment. Amanda was awarded custody of these dogs, but they are older than Hannah and far more needy, so she relinquished them because she could not afford it. My parents have, out of the goodness of their hearts, helped a lot with the financial aspect of caring for Hannah.

You've also got the Gene Hackman case. The two dogs that had free roam of the house survived, but the dog locked in its crate died; Gene's wife died first, Gene died a week after his wife, and they were both discovered another week later. This means that the dog was locked in its crate for two weeks and likely starved.

I really don't want to think about what might have happened if Hannah was alone in that condo with Emily for more than a day or two, but finding her body aside, we also saved her dad a lot of trouble in finding her so early. The condo probably would have been a biohazard after three days or so, even with the A/C on. Because we decided to check on her when we did, the most that had to be done was fixing a door and throwing out a couch.

Two good things have come out of this tragedy; we have a new family member, and I haven't really consumed any junkfood since Emily died!

 

By the way, here’s a picture of me with my dad and Pop-pop, circa 2004. The pictures was taken in the kitchen of our house in Northern Virginia, likely by my mom, sometime in 2004. My dad was stationed at the Pentagon, and the reason he’s in his Navy uniform is being he was about to have a change of command; Pop-pop had driven down from Jersey for the occasion…