Newham Little Ilford estate dead body: neighbours speak out

The man – known to locals as a drug user who often gained access to their buildings – was pronounced dead outside Charlbury House on the Little Ilford estate on Tuesday, April 30.

He died weeks after Newham Council and other agencies announced an “action plan” to tackle drug use and other antisocial behaviour, which included regular “patrols” of the estate.

But, said the woman who found the body: “Obviously, no council workers were at our block this day as he was at the entrance to their cleaning cupboard.”

The Recorder reported last week how the man is believed to have lain dead for hours before tenants realised, as they are so used to seeing unconscious addicts slumped outside their homes.

Charlbury House stands at the junction of Grantham Road and Dersingham Avenue on the Little Ilford estate. It is around a five minute walk from Ilford station, but is technically just over the border in Newham (Image: Charles Thomson)

At 7.42am, a resident took a photo of the man, which they later shared into a WhatsApp group where tenants alert each other to antisocial behaviour.

The man was on his knees, his feet – adorned with dirty blue trainers – sticking out behind him, and his head resting forward on the ground.

It was not an unusual sight on the Little Ilford estate, in Grantham Road. In March, we published shocking photographs of drug users slumped unconscious both inside and outside the blocks.

The woman who eventually dialled 999, who asked not to be named, did so at 1.45pm.

Having seen the man’s photo on WhatsApp all those hours earlier, she said, “I thought it strange that the person was still there in the same position. I tried to wake him, shouting, Hello! Hello!”

When she got no response, she called 999.

“They asked me to turn him over and I physically couldn’t do it,” she said. “There were many flies around him… Emergency services arrived and the poor man was dead.”

The Recorder is not publishing the image of the man laying possibly already dead last Tuesday. But we did publish these images in March which residents said showed unconscious drug users who continually entered their homes, leaving syringes, blood and other unpleasant things behind (Image: Supplied)

The Recorder has also spoken to a man who may be the last person to have seen the victim alive.

He too wished to remain anonymous, but said he saw the man at 6.50am on his way to work – in the same area where he was later found dead.

“That guy was there when I left,” he said. “He was wasted. He was gearing up. He had all of his drugs around him… He was in joyful spirits. He was chirping. He asked me for a cigarette.”

The resident had encountered the man lots of times, but never got to know him.

“You can’t have a proper conversation with someone who just wants to get his heroin in his veins,” he said.

“He didn’t come here to socialise. He came here to get high. He’d fall asleep for a little while and then he’d be gone.”

A resident captured this image of a drug user with all their paraphernalia spread across the floor of a communal area inside Charlbury House. We published the image in March, alongside many other, showing the depth of the Little Ilford estate's problems (Image: Supplied)

He too said the tragic death undermined state agencies’ claims to be tackling the estate’s problems.

“The night before the guy died, we had about seven or eight people out the back here, doing drugs in the same spot where the guy passed away,” he said.

“They are doing very little to help us. Very, very little.”

The Newham Council “action plan” was announced in response to a special report by this newspaper in March.

Our reporter found faeces and a used syringe during a visit to the estate, where residents said they were afraid to leave their homes after dark as the buildings were constantly accessed by prostitutes, drug-dealers and addicts.

They described regularly finding syringes and other drugs paraphernalia, used condoms, blood, urine and excrement inside and outside their tower blocks.

“What does it take?” pensioner Calvin Terry, of Charlbury House, asked in that story. “Does someone have to get killed before anyone decides to do anything?”

A police officer stood guard at the cordon last Tuesday, April 30, after the man's body was found outside Charlbury House (Image: Supplied)

Speaking after the discovery of the man’s body less than two months later, he signed: “It came true. It’s a really tragic story. It’s just a shame.”

“Hopefully this will wake them up,” he said of the authorities.

“I find this terribly sad and I’m so sorry that I could not do more,” said the woman who called 999.

“That’s someone’s son and nobody should die alone.”

The Metropolitan Police said: “The death is being treated as unexpected but not suspicious and a file will be prepared for the coroner.”

Newham Council was approached for comment.