Deputies entering Texas home for welfare check hear one gunshot, find two bodies

Authorities on Sunday continued to investigate after deputies conducting a welfare check entered a Texas home, heard a gunshot and then discovered two dead men, including one who had apparently died months ago. The Harris County Sheriff’s Office said a man fatally shot himself just before deputies entered his home and found he had been living with a corpse.

Neighbors contacted the Harris County Sheriff’s Office on Saturday evening about concerns they hadn’t seen one of the men who lived at the home for months, said Deputy Thomas Gilliland, an agency spokesman.

At the home in west Houston, deputies “did notice that there were a lot of flies and a bad odor from one end of the house,” Gilliland said.

After entering the home, the deputies heard a shot from the rear of the home and found the body of a 63-year-old man with a self-inflicted gunshot wound in a bedroom, Gilliland said.

“In another adjoining bedroom, they did find the body of a male also that had been severely decomposed,” Gilliland said.

It was unclear how the man had died but it appeared he had been dead for as long as several months, officials said.

Gilliland said an autopsy was planned on the decomposed body.

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

Authorities said the victim was 62 years old. Their names have not been released by authorities, pending next of kin notification.

The Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences will determine the cause and manner of death for both men, and the Harris County Sheriff’s Office Homicide Unit is investigating the case.