Dead body 'lands next to sunbather' after falling from plane
A stowaway has fallen from the undercarriage of a jet as it approached a London airport from Kenya, landing next to a horrified sunbather, a resident has claimed.
Police and airport officials confirmed the body was discovered in a backyard of a property with the flight heading for Heathrow Airport after a nine-hour flight from Nairobi on Sunday.
The deceased unidentified man has yet to be identified after being found in the residential garden on Offerton Road in south London's Clapham area.
A resident told Sky News he had heard a loud noise before checking outside of his window.
He spotted the fully clothed man, whose frozen body was still in tact, but on closer inspection knew something was wrong when he spotted blood on the garden walls.
“I went outside and it was just then the neighbour came out and he was very shaken,” he said.
"He had been sunbathing and he landed one metre away from him."
Police said a post-mortem would be held to determine the cause of death.
Kenya Airways said police traced the body to its Nairobi-London flight. A bag, water and food were discovered in the plane's landing-gear compartment after it landed.
The airline called the death "unfortunate" and said it was cooperating with British and Kenyan authorities.
Stowing away in a plane's undercarriage is exceptionally dangerous.
Experts believe roughly three-quarters of stowaways do not survive because of the extreme cold and lack of oxygen as the plane reaches cruising altitude.
Though not common, stowaways have in the past plunged to the streets of London as planes lowered their landing gear.
In September 2012, a 30-year old from Mozambique, Jose Matada, died after falling from the undercarriage of a Heathrow-bound flight from Angola.
February marked the 49th anniversary of Sydney stowaway Keith Sapsford who was caught on camera falling from the skies as a flight took off for Tokyo.
- with AP
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