Monterey Hills Man May Not Have Been Murdered

The body of an 84-year-old Monterey Hills man was found Wednesday in his possibly ransacked home, but a Los Angeles police detective said he was not entirely convinced he was a homicide victim.
  
The body was found in the living room of home in the 3700 block of Collis Avenue about 10:15 a.m., authorities said.
  
A police watch commander at the Hollenbeck Station said there was no obvious trauma to the body, and the cause of death has not been determined. The man's name was being withheld pending notification of his next of kin.
  
Detective De Waine Fields of the Los Angeles Police Department's Hollenbeck Division said that there was no evidence of forced entry and
while police would continue to treat it as a homicide, they also were prepared for a determination by the Los Angeles County Department of Coroner that he was not a murder victim.
  
``It could be natural and he was trying to get back up and knocked over some dishes. There was no sign of forced entry, no outward sign of a struggle with another person. When you first walk in it looks like there was a struggle, but there's always a chance he was struggling to get back up,'' Fields said.
  
Neighbors heard nothing suspicious but they knew of the man.
 
``Some people say he was grumpy and feisty but inside he was nice guy,'' Natalie Ramos, one of the neighborhood children, said.
  
Fields said police would continue to investigate the case as a possible homicide, at least until the Department of Coroner says otherwise.
  
Neighbors said the man had lived alone since his wife died about five years ago. During World War II, he was an Austrian citizen drafted into the German army at age 17 and spent time in a prisoner of war camp in the Soviet Union.  Neighbor who knew the man were quick to point out he was not a member of the Nazi party.