Toronto woman can't live in rooming house after neighbour's body went undiscovered for weeks

A resident of a downtown Toronto rooming house says her unit is uninhabitable after the body of a neighbour lay undiscovered in his room for weeks.

Viki Murugaiyah, 53, has been living in the house for 12 years. She says she believes the victim had been dead for about two weeks before his body was taken away by emergency service personnel over a week ago. She says she started noticing a foul odour in the latter part of May, but thought it was because the landlord hadn't cleaned the house for several months.

"I thought it was garbage or something," Murugaiyah told CBC Toronto on Thursday.

She says the stench got progressively worse so she messaged and called the landlord several times between June 1 and 2 but got no response.

The odour was so bad she "wasn't able to cook or eat," she says.

"It was disturbing me, I light incense in the house, I put air freshener but it doesn't [remove] the smell," she said.

Murugaiyah says sometime in May she stopped seeing the elderly man. She also noticed that she had not heard any sound coming from his room. She says she could normally hear the television playing or any other type of movement. She says she asked the landlord to check in on the resident.

The landlord, Jojo Ye, told CBC News she asked another tenant to check in on the man. She says the tenant told her the man was fine.

Ye says she thought a raccoon had died in the house.

By June 14, Murugaiyah was finding it impossible to function in her own unit, so she called the emergency services.

"Immediately the fire workers came … They opened the door [to the elderly man's room] and they said he passed away," Murugaiyah said.

The body was removed from the building around 2 a.m. on June 15.

A spokesperson with Toronto Fire Services told CBC News they went to the house, along with paramedics, on June 14 after receiving a call about bad odour coming from a unit.

They forced down the door and found the body of a man.