Elderly man found dead in Hong Kong flat spent a day or more with dead son-in-law caretaker
Experts suspect needs of the elderly are being neglected after 84-year-old and his son-in-law carer are found dead in their Tin Shui Wai flat
PUBLISHED : Sunday, 26 July, 2015, 4:31pm
UPDATED : Monday, 27 July, 2015, 9:15am
Samuel Chan and Phila Siu
Mortuary workers remove the bodies from the flat yesterday. Photo: David Wong
An 84-year-old who was confined to a wheelchair and could not feed himself was found dead yesterday with his 61-year-old son-in-law, his sole carer, in the flat they shared in Tin Shui Wai.
Police believe the younger man suffered a fatal fall several days earlier.
Neighbours on the Tin Yiu Estate in the new town often dubbed the "city of sadness" for its social tragedies, called police to report a foul smell at 11.30am. Firefighters found the son-in-law on the floor next to his bed.
The tragedy prompted calls for reinforced support for elderly people living in neighbourhoods with younger demographics.
In Tin Shui Wai, built in the northwestern New Territories in the 1990s, the large proportion of public housing and lack of jobs and community facilities have been blamed for high rates of unemployment, suicide and domestic violence. In 2004, a jobless man in the town killed his wife and two daughters before taking his own life.
"The older man was gaunt and appeared to have starved for a long time," said a police source, adding that the 84-year-old, surnamed Chiu, needed to be fed and was connected to a urine drainage bag. He was too frail to move himself in the wheelchair.
Emergency workers enter the housing estate where the two men were found. The younger man appears to have died when he fell out of bed. Photo: David Wong
"The son-in-law appears to have died about five to six days ago judging from the state of the body," the source said. "His father-in-law died about one to two days afterwards."
Police found nothing suspicious about the deaths.
The son-in-law, married to Chiu's younger daughter and surnamed Zhu, arrived in the city in 2009 after a failed business venture in Africa, the source said. He could not return to the mainland as he renounced his nationality before going to Africa.
The older man was said to have had a distant relationship with his son and two daughters.
The flat has no access to the Personal Emergency Link Service, which provides emergency help at the press of a button to more than 80,000 elderly people who live alone in the city.
A postmortem examination will be conducted to find out the exact causes of the deaths.
The Social Welfare Department said the pair had not been under its care and that it would contact their relatives to see what assistance they needed.
Professor Nelson Chow Wing-sun, an expert in social policy at the University of Hong Kong, said: "Two elderly men dead without anyone noticing for almost a week - such a thing should not have happened in a city like Hong Kong."
He said the needs of elderly people living in a new town with a relatively young population might have been overlooked.
"Low-income families make up the bulk of Tin Shui Wai's population, and since 2004, to tackle domestic violence, there has been much greater community support provided to families," Chow said. "But as the community ages, this tragedy might indicate that the needs of the elderly have been overlooked."
