A 53-year-old man in Birmingham, England, has been sentenced to two years in prison—which is around the same amount of time that he kept his dead roommate's body in a freezer. Prosecutors said that when 71-year-old John Wainwright died in September 2018, Damion Johnson ordered a chest freezer instead of reporting the death. Johnson had known Wainwright for 27 years and moved into his Birmingham apartment as his registered carer in 2015, Sky News reports. After Johnson was arrested on an unrelated matter in December 2019, police barred him from returning to the apartment—but didn't search it.
The apartment was boarded up with the freezer unplugged. After report of a "horrendous" smell, the freezer was removed in August 2020, and Wainwright's body was found by workers at a dumpster rental service. Johnson—who had told relatives Wainwright had died and a funeral had taken place—was arrested on charges of preventing a burial. He was also charged with fraud because he had withdrawn around $25,000 from Wainwright's account after his death and continued to collect payments for being his carer.
Johnson told police that he had been "overcome by grief" after the death of a man he saw as a father figure, Metro reports. Defense attorney Raglan Ashton told the court that Johnson had an "informal agreement" with Wainwright that if one of them died, the other would still be able to access the funds in the account. Johnson's behavior was a "serious affront to public standards of decency," Judge Shaun Smith said. "Had you accepted his death and gone about it in a normal way, he would have received a good and decent burial," Smith added. (More United Kingdom stories.)
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