POLICE launched a major investigation after a woman's body was discovered at a house in the Boscombe area of Bournemouth.

They cordoned off the pavement and put up a tent on the forecourt of the Gladstone Road East property so that forensic experts could carry out a thorough examination.

Ambulance control alerted the police at 10.28pm on Sunday after paramedics called to the house found the 48-year-old, who had lived at the address for several years, was already dead.

A neighbour said: "I was fast asleep when the police knocked on my door.

"They were just going up and down outside with a torch, checking in all the bins. They had white sheeting over the front of the house.

"I asked them this morning what had happened and was told: 'Just wait and see.'

"I'm not sure what's gone on. She was just a lovely, happy-go-lucky person."

Another neighbour said she believed the dead woman had one or two teenage sons.

"I used to hear them in the garden when the weather was nic," she said. "I haven't heard a peep for the last couple of weeks.

"Last night something woke me at 2.30am. The area was all taped up, but the police were ever so quiet.

"It's just unbelievable that I never heard anything."

It is thought the dark-haired woman worked at a local restaurant and came from Scotland.

The tragedy is the second to rock the neighbourhood in recent years.

A few hundred yards away, shopkeeper Jimmy Riggs was battered to death and his home in Wolverton Road set on fire by two robbers in December 2001.

One of the men perished in the flames and the other is now serving a life sentence for murder.

A police spokesman said that the cause of the woman's death was unexplained and the East Dorset coroner had been informed.

Anyone with information is asked to ring them on 01202 222222 or Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.

First published: November 1