When Peter Davies arrived home Tuesday evening, there were sheriff's deputies going in and out of his next door neighbor's home.
"The officer stood over there. He couldn't handle the smell," Davies said.
It was the smell of a decomposing corpse. Davies said he hadn't seen the man who lived at the San Tan Heights home for about three weeks, but didn't notice anything out of the ordinary until the door to the man's rental home was opened and the odor came out.
Davies said the man was only discovered because a cable worker became suspicious when he was there and saw flies, so he called authorities. Davies said after the man's remains were removed, the house was locked up, but not cleaned up.
"Nobody's been by, nobody's stopped by, nobody's done anything," he said.
Now three days later. Davies said the flies that you see infesting his neighbor's house are now coming into his house. Neighbors called Pinal County Public Health. County spokesperson Joe Pyritz said there's nothing the agency can do in this case.
"We really don't have the authority or the expertise to clean something like this up," Pyritz said. "If this was something that was going on outside, they would be able to take care of it at that point because that would include possible fly breeding and bodily fluids. But again, our hands are tied when it comes to private property and what our health department can and cannot do."
A property records search lists the owner as Daniel Coury, Sr. We reached out to him and were called back by a woman who identified herself as one of his workers. She said after the sheriff's department broke through the door to investigate, a padlock was put on that they weren't able to get the code to right away. She said a cleanup crew will be out Saturday to start work.
Davies said that's really all they wanted to know, that someone was taking care of the problem.
"We want to see it cleaned up," he said.
