September 8, 2010 | By Kaieteur News
…odour caused neighbours to feel unwell
Police found the badly decomposed body of 70-year-old Elsie Nieuenkirk in her house at 52 Winkle, New Amsterdam, Berbice, yesterday.
The police who were called to the scene by neighbours who complained that they were being affected by a strong odour that was emanating from the building in which the woman lived alone.
The police, who were summoned just before midday, had to breakdown the door to enter the building. The woman who had recently returned from overseas where she had lived for a considerable time, was last seen around Saturday evening by neighbours.
Neighbours and relatives told this publication that the woman showed no signs of sickness and would usually leave the house for days. So when she was not seen they thought that she had gone out. Even when they started to smell something funny they never considered that it might be their neighbour.
They decided to call the police after the stench got stronger and it seemed to be emanating from Nieuenkirk’s house which was tightly shut.
What cops thought would have been a routine exercise turned out to be a lengthy and frustrating workout as none of the funeral parlours in Berbice were willing to move the body or store the corpse.
A few of the funeral homes came and left, while some said that they did not have the capacity to handle such cases. One parlour offered to moved the body, but only as far as the cemetery and bury it immediately.
Meanwhile, relatives from overseas were frantically calling those in Guyana, who by then were arriving in their numbers, requesting that they do all in their power to preserve the body and stop the authorities from burying the corpse.
After much deliberations and some confrontation, with the police trying to explain their stance and calm the situation, the Lyken Funeral Parlour from Georgetown was contacted and agreed to travel the more than 100 miles to Berbice and back, to collect and take the body back to the capital and have it preserved until relatives can arrive from overseas.
Some time after 19:00 hrs the undertakers from Lyken arrived and removed the body.