WARREN, N.H. (AP) – The state attorney general’s office said Wednesday the death of an 89-year-old man was a homicide.

No one had been arrested and state and local police were seeking the public’s help to solve the crime.

Albert Powell, 89, was found dead at his home Monday night by an acquaintance, authorities said. An autopsy was performed Tuesday night and the death was ruled a homicide. No details were released.

State police spent much of Tuesday investigating at Powell’s home, an old brick farmhouse with an attached barn.

Neighbors said Powell, a former resident of Gloucester, Mass., had used the house as a summer home for years, then retired there about a decade ago.

A widower twice over, he lived alone and had to give up his driver’s license last summer. But he turned down an offer to spend the winter at his son’s home in New York State, said a neighbor who gave her name only as Ms. Howard.

Meals on Wheels delivered food to his house, neighbors gave him rides, and a man in town plowed his driveway so he could remain independent, Howard said.

“He was a sweetheart, just very nice, very soft-spoken,” she said.

Howard said she called Powell on Sunday to see if he needed a ride to the dump, but got only his answering machine. When she saw lights on at his house later, she guessed he’d gotten a ride from someone else.

The man who plowed Powell’s driveway found him dead Monday after calling him and getting only his answering machine, she said.