The body of a man that fell from a plane hit the ground just one metre from a man sunbathing in his back garden in London, a neighbour has claimed
Scotland Yard are working to establish the identity of the suspected stowaway, who is thought to have fallen from the landing gear compartment of an inbound Kenya Airways flight to Heathrow Airport.
Police were called on Sunday afternoon to a residential address in Offerton Road, Clapham, after the body was discovered in a garden.
One neighbour described hearing a “whomp” as the body hit the ground, and that the body was an “ice block”.
The neighbour told the Press Association: “I heard a ‘whomp’ – I went upstairs to look out of a window. At first I though it was a tramp asleep in the garden.
“He had all of his clothes on and everything. I had a closer look and saw there was blood all over the walls of the garden.
“His head was not in a good way. I realised immediately that he had fallen.
“So I went outside and it was just then the neighbour came out and he was very shaken.
“He had been sunbathing and he landed one metre away from him.”
Describing the victim, he said: “One of the reasons his body was so intact was because his body was an ice block.”
The neighbour, who asked not to be named, said that a plane spotter, who had been following the flight on an plane tracking app from Clapham Common, had seen the body fall.
He said: “I spoke to Heathrow Airport this morning to ask if they were aware of this.
“If it had been two seconds later, he would have landed on the common where there were hundreds of people – my kids were in the garden 15 minutes before [he fell].
“I spoke to Heathrow. They said this happens once every five years.”
Another neighbour said she had heard a thump, but thought it was falling scaffolding from nearby building works.
Referring to her neighbours, she said: “My heart goes out to them, they’re going to have to live with that for the rest of their lives.”
Officers attended with the London Ambulance Service.
The death is not being treated as suspicious and the crime scene that was put in place has now closed.
A post-mortem examination will be carried out in due course.
Police are now trying to find out who the man was and enquiries are underway to establish the full circumstances.
A bag, water and some food were discovered in the landing gear compartment once it landed at the airport.
In 2012, Jose Matada fell to his death from a British Airways flight inbound from Angola.
Matada, originally from Mozambique, was found on the pavement in East Sheen on September 9.
An inquest into his death heard he is believed to have survived freezing temperatures of up to minus 60C for most of the 12-hour flight.
But he was understood to be “dead or nearly dead” by the time he hit the ground.
In 2015, the body of a man landed on a shop in Richmond having clung on in the undercarriage of a plane from Johannesburg in South Africa to Heathrow.
