Police failed to recover man's body
Police who searched a house for a missing man but failed to find his decomposing body have been disciplined, it has been confirmed.
Officers searched the house after neighbours said the man had not been seen for a week.
But they failed to find his body in the property, where windows were boarded-up and rubbish was half-a-metre deep.
It was only after a second search that the man's decomposing corpse was found under a blanket in the living room of the house.
Northern Ireland's Police Ombudsman Al Hutchinson, who investigated the September 2008 incident, said: "I think there is a lesson for all of us in official organisations that vulnerable people, such as those dependant on alcohol, are still falling though the cracks in the system.
"If it was not for the persistence of the man's neighbour the discovery of his body would have been delayed even further."
Police Ombudsman investigators examined the house and found it in an extreme state of disrepair, with no working toilet and dead maggots in places.
