A North Carolina family wants answers after three relatives were found dead inside a Rocky Mount home where the city had recently cut off electricity, and officials have yet to explain why they refused partial payment on a bill topping $2,000.

Rocky Mount police forced entry into a home on King Charles Court on Monday morning and discovered the bodies of Tracey Swann, Kenny Swann, and 20-year-old Mahala Scurlock, whom Tracey had adopted. Officers arrived at 10:45 a.m. after a family member reported a disturbing smell coming from the residence. Three dogs were also found inside.

Police said they have not determined a cause of death and contacted the North Carolina Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, which will provide an official ruling. Investigators said there appears to be no safety threat to surrounding residents, a standard reassurance that, for the Swann family, offers little comfort.

What the family does know is this: the City of Rocky Mount had recently shut off electricity to the home. Krista Crisp, Tracey Swann's daughter, told WRAL that the household's utility bill had climbed past $2,000. Tracey, the only working member of the household, tried to make partial payments. The city would only accept the full amount.

So the power stayed off. And now three people are dead.

A weekend of warning signs went unanswered

The timeline the family described to WRAL suggests the deaths did not happen without warning, at least not to those paying attention. On Saturday, Tracey Swann failed to show up for a planned family shopping trip. That was unusual enough to raise concern.

On Sunday, a family member went to the King Charles Court home and knocked on the front door. No one answered. By Monday morning, that same family member returned and called Crisp with a grim report: "I smell death."

Police entered the home shortly after. The scene that greeted them, three bodies, three dogs, a house with no power, is now the subject of a formal investigation. But the family is not waiting for the medical examiner to draw its own conclusions about what went wrong.

Crisp told reporters her mother had done everything she could to keep the lights on. Tracey was working. She offered what she could afford. The city's billing system, which had already drawn scrutiny for months of documented problems, would not bend. Rocky Mount had been charging customers late fees and disconnecting service for unpaid bills, a policy it resumed after a period of exceptions tied to those same billing issues, WRAL previously reported.

Rocky Mount's billing mess preceded the shutoff

The city's utility billing system had been under a cloud for months before the Swann family lost power. WRAL had reported on an audit and council members' concerns about Rocky Mount's billing practices, a backdrop that makes the city's rigid insistence on full payment all the more difficult to defend.

When a municipality knows its own billing apparatus has been unreliable, demanding every last dollar before restoring electricity to a household is not fiscal discipline. It is bureaucratic indifference. Tracey Swann tried to pay part of the bill. The city said no. Whether that decision contributed to three deaths is now a question the medical examiner and investigators will have to answer.

The City of Rocky Mount did not immediately respond to WRAL's request for comment. That silence speaks volumes, or at least raises the question of whether anyone at city hall understood the stakes of cutting power to a home where a working woman was already struggling to keep up.

Across the country, tragic discoveries in neglected circumstances have forced communities to ask hard questions about who falls through the cracks and why. Rocky Mount now faces that same reckoning.

Elizabeth Scurlock remembers a family that gave everything

Elizabeth Scurlock, a niece of Tracey and Kenneth Swann, told WRAL she is still struggling to process what happened. Her description of the family was simple and direct:

"They would give you the clothes off their back if they could. They meant, they mean the world to us."

Mahala Scurlock was just 20 years old. Tracey Swann had adopted her, an act of generosity consistent with the family Elizabeth described. Now all three are gone, found together in a home the city had cut off from the grid.

The case carries echoes of other devastating scenes involving multiple family members found dead in a home, though the circumstances here point not to violence but to something potentially more preventable.

Police have not said whether the loss of electricity played any role in the deaths. The cause could turn out to be something else entirely. But the family's account, a shutoff, a bill over $2,000, refused partial payments, a working mother stretched thin, paints a picture of a household that was failed by the very city government collecting its money.

Key questions remain for investigators and the city

Several critical facts are still unknown. The medical examiner has not issued a cause of death. The condition of the three dogs found inside the home has not been disclosed. Police have not said whether any alternative heating or power source was in use, a detail that could prove central depending on the examiner's findings.

Investigators in other recent death investigations have withheld key details for extended periods, leaving families in agonizing limbo. The Swann family may be facing the same wait.

And the city still has not spoken. Rocky Mount officials have not confirmed or denied the shutoff, have not explained their refusal of partial payments, and have not addressed whether the billing problems that plagued the system for months had any bearing on the Swann household's situation. Every hour that passes without a response deepens the impression that the city would rather not answer for what happened on King Charles Court.

In North Carolina and beyond, families dealing with sudden, unexplained death deserve transparency from the institutions that serve them. The Swanns are no exception.

When a city's billing system is already under scrutiny, and a resident begs to pay what she can, and the city says no, and that resident turns up dead, the public has a right to hear more than silence.