The body of a stowaway who fell into the garden of a suburban London house from a jet as it passed overhead narrowly missed the sunbathing resident, neighbours revealed.
Police and airline officials say the man fell from the landing gear of the plane as it approached London’s Heathrow Airport after a nine-hour flight from Nairobi, Kenya.
The Metropolitan Police force confirmed the body of an unidentified man was found in a south London garden on Sunday, and it’s believed he fell from a plane.
A bag, water and food were discovered in the Boeing 787’s landing-gear compartment.
The corpse, wearing jeans and a blue t-shirt, was found in the residential property in Clapham, south London, at around 3.30pm, police said.
Neighbours told today how the resident was enjoying the warm weather in his back garden of their £2.3 million terraced house when the body hit the ground just feet away.
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The man was thought to have fallen from the landing gear of the Kenya Airways flight from Nairobi to Heathrow Airport
The body was discovered in the garden of a £2.3m home in Offerton Road in Clapham, south London, on Sunday afternoon
Flight KQ 100 snaked through south London as it headed towards Heathrow Airport. The man is believed to have fallen from the plane as it passed over Offerton Road in Clapham
One told MailOnline: ‘I was pottering around in the kitchen yesterday afternoon when there was an almighty bang.
‘At first I thought it was some scaffolding falling down and thought nothing more about it.
‘My husband decided to see what was going on and went upstairs to take a look.
‘He didn’t tell me what had happened at first. He was obviously quite shocked and went out into the street where my neighbour was standing on the phone to the police.
‘He was really shaken up. He’d been in the garden when it happened and the body must have landed so close to where he was.
‘My husband came back in and I asked him what was going on and he said ”haven’t you seen the man? – the man who fell from the sky?”
‘I wondered what he was talking about and went up to see for myself and there in the middle of the lawn was a body of a man.’
Kenya Airways said today that police traced the body to its Nairobi-London flight.
Flight data shows the jet had descended to 3,575ft (over half a mile) as it began preparing to land and was travelling at around 200mph at around 3.36pm yesterday when it passed over Offerton Road.
It left Jomo Kenyatta International Airport at 9.19am local time and arrived at 3.50pm BST.
The garden where the man landed is a short distance from Clapham Common where families were soaking up the sun as Britain was hit by a heatwave over the weekend.
The body is believed to have landed in this back garden in Clapham, south London, after falling from around 3,575ft from the Kenya Airways jet
The neighbour added that the stowaway was fully clothed and ‘badly twisted’ when he was discovered in a ‘dent in the grass’.
She told MailOnline: ‘He was fully clothed, wearing jeans and a blue shirt I believe.
‘The body was in tact as far as I could see. Whether that was because he was frozen, I don’t know.
‘He looked to be lying facing up but his neck was quite badly twisted. Next to him was a dent in the grass which must have been the point of impact.
‘I made sure none of my boys were looking, Luckily they weren’t really aware of what was going on.
‘The police arrived quite quickly. There were a lot of them.
‘The body stayed where it was until about 7.30pm when it was moved by the Coroners Office.
‘The day before there was a children’s party so it could have been even worse.
‘My heart goes out to my neighbour and also to the poor victim. It’s so out of the ordinary and certainly not what you’d like expect in a quiet suburban London street.’
The airline called the death ‘unfortunate’ and said it was cooperating with British and Kenyan authorities.
He has not yet been identified and his age is also not known as this stage, authorities said.
A post-mortem examination will be carried out in due course and police said officers are working to establish the man’s identity.
A crime scene was put in place but has since been closed by the Met.
The death is not being treated as suspicious, police said, and the instigation is continuing.
According to another nextdoor neighbour, the man fell just a metre from the man while he was sunbathing in his garden.
He said: ‘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.’
The neighbour, who asked not to be named, said that a plane spotter who had been following the flight on an app from Clapham Common had seen the body fall.
The plane spotter had arrived almost at the same time as the police and told them it had been a Kenyan Airways flight.
The unidentified stowaway was found in the garden of a home in Offerton Road in Clapham, south London. The street is seen here in this aerial image
The stowaway was in the landing gear of a flight bound from Nairobi to Heathrow Airport (pictured in a file image) in west London
A neighbour added: ‘A plane enthusiast arrived on a bike from Clapham Common. He’d been tracking the plane on an mobile phone app and apparently watched the man fall. It doesn’t bear thinking about.’
The house in Offerton Road was bought for £2.3million last November by a tech entrepreneur aged in his early 30s.
His father is believed to have made millions in business in the Midlands.
The sunbather, who is said to be in his 20s and renting the property with friends, was sleeping in the garden as the body crashed to earth.
It passed through a bush and landed with such force it left a crater in the lawn and cracked a part of the paving on the garden path.
The man’s friend, who was inside the house at the time, said it was a miracle the impact did not cause a fatality.
He told the Sun: ‘He [the sunbather] didn’t even realise what it was to begin with. He was asleep and then there was a huge impact.
‘The body literally landed one metre away from him and was obliterated. My friend was very shaken.
‘There were a few of us in the house at the time and it was lucky only one of us was in the garden.
‘Nobody would have survived being hit. The impact was horrific.’
The brother of the tenant said he was ‘very badly shaken’ and that there was ‘a lot of blood’ at the scene.
Flight data shows the Kenya Airways jet descended to 3,575ft as it began preparing to land and was travelling at around 200mph when it passed over south London
The unnamed man fell from the landing gear of a jet as it passed over south London. Pictured are Kenya Airways planes parked at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport near Nairobi (file image)
He added: ‘It was a narrow miss. The garden isn’t very big. There was more than a lot of blood. It wasn’t pretty and caused a significant amount of damage.’
Another neighbour told how the man relaxing in the garden as the body landed was shaken up by the horrific incident.
He said: ‘I saw the young lad who’d been in the garden when it happened.
‘He was sitting on his front steps and was really shaken up. He was almost in a trance.
‘I asked him if he was OK and if he needed anything. He said in a soft quite voice ”no thanks” and I think that was all he could say.
‘The police were with him. You could see this had really affected him – but then it would anyone.’
A separate neighbour said the body was removed at about 8.30pm and that the clean-up team returned on Monday morning to continue the job.
He said: ‘The police had four cars. They were here for about five hours to start the clean-up operation.
‘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.’
Neighbours in Offerton Road told how the dead man landed just feet from a resident enjoying the warm weather in his garden
Authorities traced the jet back to a Nairobi to Heathrow (pictured) flight. An investigation is ongoing but the death is not being treated as suspicious by police
Describing the victim, he said: ‘One of the reasons his body was so intact was because his body was an ice block.’
Police believe the man was a stowaway and had fallen from under the aircraft of the inbound Kenya Airways flight to Heathrow Airport in west London.
Officers tracked the flight radar to KQ Flight 100 where the man’s possessions were found in the rear left wheel well.
The 4,250-mile trip from Nairobi to Heathrow takes around eight hours and 50 minutes, according to the airline.
Kenya Airways also told local media the Kenya High Commission has already been contacted.
The statement read: ‘The incident has been treated as a sudden death and is now a police matter. The police have already been in contact with the Kenya High Commission to help identify and name the person.
‘The 6,840km flight takes 8hrs 50mins. It is unfortunate that a person has lost his life by stowing aboard one of our aircraft and we express our condolences.
‘Kenya Airways is working closely with the relevant authorities in Nairobi and London as they fully investigate this case.’
The aircraft was cleared to take-off again today after being inspected at Heathrow and no damage was reported, according to Kenyan outlet Citizen Digital.
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