Stowaway found dead in garden after falling from plane near Heathrow
Written by News on 01/07/2019
A stowaway fell from a plane’s landing gear as it approached Heathrow Airport and was later found dead in a garden.
The man’s body was found in Clapham, south London, on Sunday afternoon, police have said.
Officers are unsure of his age, and are trying to identify him.
He fell from a Kenya Airways plane at the end of a nine-hour flight from Nairobi.
Police connected the body to their flight, the airline said.
A bag, water and food were found in the compartment containing the plane’s landing gear.
The Metropolitan Police said it was called at 3.39pm on Sunday to Offerton Road in Clapham.
A post mortem examination will be carried out, but the death is “not being treated as suspicious”, the force added.
In a statement, it said “police believe the man was a stowaway and had fallen from the landing gear of an inbound Kenya Airways flight to Heathrow Airport.
“A bag, water and some food were discovered in the landing gear compartment once it landed at the airport.”
Officers will be liaising “with the airline and international authorities”.
Although a rare occurrence, it has happened before.
In September 2012, a 30-year-old man from Mozambique, Jose Matada, died after falling from the undercarriage of a flight approaching Heathrow from Angola.
He is believed to have survived freezing temperatures of up to minus 60C for most of the 12-hour flight, an inquest heard.
But by the time he hit the ground he was “dead or nearly dead”.
In 2015, the body of a man landed on a shop in Richmond, southwest London, after travelling in the undercarriage of a plane from Johannesburg.
(c) Sky News 2019: Stowaway found dead in garden after falling from plane near Heathrow
