TCHULA – Authorities said a man found dead sitting on his living room sofa had many health-related issues, but the excessive heat could also have been a factor in his death. Primary autopsy results released this week on 58-year old Lee Henry Sly, of Holmes County, stated that he died of complications of hypertension, heart disease and diabetes. But officials said Sly was also in a house during a week of extremely hot temperatures with no air conditioning.
Tchula’s Assistant Police Chief Lenwood Genous said Sly’s body was found on July 14 after a friend said she hadn’t seen him in a few days.
“He used to go to the girl’s mother’s house about every day,” Genous said. “She lives across the street about a block away and she missed him for a couple of days and she asked her daughter to go and check on him. And when she went there, [the daughter] could smell the odor coming out of the house.”
Genous said Sly lived in a small mobile home on North Park Circle, and the woman could see him sitting on the couch from the window.
Sly was wearing only a pair of shorts.
“It’s a small trailer,” said Genous, “and he had no air conditioner, just a small fan sitting on the floor.”
Alonzo Lewis, the Victim Assistance Coordinator for the City of Tchula, also responded to the scene and said the fan was not running and there were no open windows in Sly’s home.
Lewis said Sly lived alone.
While other states have reported numerous heat-related deaths this year, 18 in Illinois alone, Lynn Burse, of the National Weather Service (NWS) in Jackson, said none have been reported in the state of Mississippi.
NWS officials said however, that with a steady stream of excessive heat indices, people with prior medical conditions can succumb to the heat, and their deaths go unreported as heat-related.
There were at least eight deaths associated with the heat in Mississippi in 2010.
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