‘SOMETHING WENT WRONG’

‘Difficult to Comprehend’ How London Woman Lay Dead for Years Without Discovery: Inquest

When Sheila Seleoane stopped paying her rent, a coroner’s inquest heard, her landlords simply dipped into her social security benefits.

It was “clear something went wrong” in the case of a 61-year-old woman who lay dead in her south London flat for more than two and a half years before being discovered by the authorities, a coroner told an inquest Thursday. Sheila Seleoane was found badly decomposed on her sofa in Feb. 2022 after a neighbor reported storm damage to her property. But the former healthcare worker is believed, based on receipts found in her flat, to have died of natural causes in Aug. 2019. “Any death is sad. To lie undetected is difficult to comprehend,” said the coroner, Julian Morris. A number of neighbors told investigators that they’d complained about a foul smell emanating from Seleoane’s apartment as far back as Oct. 2019, but the building’s management, Peabody Housing, had taken little action. When she fell into arrears, Peabody began withdrawing her rent each month from her social security payments, the inquest heard, according to the Daily Mail. Little attempt at contacting her was ever made. Seleoane was buried in June in a province of South Africa by distant relatives.