Swollen Man Hoisted To Earth

Firefighters had to winch a man's rotting corpse more than 100ft to the ground after he swelled up to almost twice his size after dying in an eighth-floor flat.

People living below looked on in horror as vast bloated corpse,strapped to a door,was lowered past their windows,

Police were forced to call in firefighters to move the man as he was too large to to fit through doorways or into the lift.

It took five hours to remove the three-week-old body from the high rise flat in Bedford.

It is believed to be that of a 51-year-old local man but police say full identification can only be made using fingerprints.

As the corpse was so large,firemen used a special Bronto hydraulic skylift to climb 100 feet to the flat balcony window before strapping it to the door and winching it down.

"We had a call from the council to say that a resident hadn't been seen for a while,so entered the premises" said local police sergeant Mark Summerfield.

"The occupant was found on the settee in the living room.He was in a severe state of decomposition and hadn't been seen for quite a considerable period of time.

"He was of a considerable bulk and we believe his body had swelled to twice its normal size after death.I would put him at weighing between 30 and 40 stones."

One neighbour Lzubica Karadza,47,watched the whole removal process.

"It was such a shock.I had seen him around just before Christmas but we don't really talk to each other in these flats and I didn't know his name.He was a very big man."

Sgt Summerfield added "It's not normally part of the fire brigade's job to shift corpses from high-rise flats.But if they hadn't assisted I don't know what we'd have done."

He warned residents to be vigilant about neighbours they may not have seen for some time.

"None of the neighbours was aware that this chap hadn't been seen for so long" he said.