Body of man who ‘fell from plane landing gear’, found in London garden

Police believe stowaway was hiding on Kenya Airways flight to Heathrow Airport

File photograph of Kenya Airways plane. A bag, water and some food were discovered in the landing gear compartment once it landed . Photograph: Thomas Mukoya/File Photo/Reuters
File photograph of Kenya Airways plane. A bag, water and some food were discovered in the landing gear compartment once it landed . Photograph: Thomas Mukoya/File Photo/Reuters

The body of a suspected stowaway believed to have fallen from a jet has been found in a south London garden.

Police were called to an address in Offerton Road in Clapham at 3.39pm on Sunday following the discovery.

It is thought the body , believed to be that of a man, fell from the landing gear of a Kenya Airways flight as it prepared to land at Heathrow Airport.

A bag, water and some food were discovered in the landing gear compartment of the plane when it arrived at the airport, the Met Police said.

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A postmortem while be carried out in due course, the force said, and the age of the individual has yet to be determined.

The death is not being treated as suspicious.

Inquiries are being conducted with the Met’s southern central command unit and its aviation policing command.

The Met said it would be liaising with the airline and international authorities.

In 2012, Jose Matada fell to his death from a British Airways flight inbound from Angola.

Mr 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 60 degrees celsius 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.–PA