Stowaway Witness: I Just Shouted At Him “It Was A Body Wasn’t It?” And He Nodded.
2 July 2019, 19:21 | Updated: 2 July 2019, 19:41
This witness described to LBC seeing a man falling from a plane and then racing to the scene only to discover a body just a metre away from a sunbathing man.
Police are trying to identify a frozen body which fell three-and-a-half thousand feet from a plane and landed in a garden in south London.
It's thought a man tried to hide in the wheel compartment at Nairobi airport and died during the nine-hour flight.
He apparently landed a metre from where a man was asleep in his garden.
LBC Reporter Rachael Venables spoke to a witness who saw an object falling from the sky.
The witness, who asked LBC to remain anonymous said he was lying in the garden sunbathing with a friend when he spotted the plane going overhead.
"Suddenly I noticed something falling from it. My friend thought it was just debris but as it got closer and closer it was clear it was a body," he said.
He told LBC it fell for about 20 seconds, and that it looked limp.
"I have an app on my phone that tracks planes, I’d never used it before, but I pulled it out and worked out this was a Nairobi to Heathrow Kenya Airways flight."
The witness said he jumped on his bike in search of the object, telling Rachael Venables that he was hoping it was not a body, but felt he needed to know what was happening.
He told LBC at one point he saw a coat on the ground and thought “that’s them.” After running towards it he realised it wasn't
Following a police car to the scene of the incident in Clapham the witness said he managed to get into the garden.
Describing the scene he told LBC he saw the man who’d been sunbathing less than a metre away from where the body had hit.
He said: "I just shouted at him 'It was a body wasn’t it?' and he nodded."
Telling LBC he explained to the police what he thought had happened he said officers were able to get authorities at Heathrow to check the plane. They found the man’s bag, water and food – and were able to make sure he hadn’t accidentally done any damage to the landing gear.
He said it was a "miracle" no one else was hurt. Just a few streets away was the Common, where hundreds of kids and their families were out enjoying the sunshine."
Officers from the Metropolitan Police are investigating.
