Kenya Airways stowaway: Residents tell of horror after body falls from plane into garden near sunbather

The scene in Clapham where the body fell to the ground into a garden
SWNS
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Residents in an affluent area of south London have told of their horror after the body of a stowaway fell from a jet and crashed down into a back garden yards from a sunbather.

A resident was enjoying the sunshine on Offerton Road, Clapham, when neighbours said they heard a “whomp” as the body hit the ground, missing him by just three feet,.

The corpse is believed to have plummeted 3,500ft to the ground from a Kenya Airways plane from Nairobi as it opened its landing gear on the approach to Heathrow Airport.

A tenant at the rented £2.3 million Clapham property was reportedly in the garden when the body landed shortly after 3.30pm on Sunday.

A large dent in the ground in the garden of the house in Clapham which is purportedly the exact spot where the stowaway's body landed, just a few feet from a sunbather
SWNS

One female neighbour described the noise of the crash as “an almighty bang”, as the corpse landed partly on concrete paving slabs and partly on a lawn.

“At first I thought it was some scaffolding falling down and thought nothing more about it,” she told MailOnline.

The body fell to the ground in a garden in a street in Clapham
Nigel Howard

Her husband then “went upstairs to take a look” at what was going on, the woman said.

“He was obviously quite shocked and went out into the street where my neighbour was standing on the phone to the police,” she explained.

It plummeted into a garden yards from a sunbather
Nigel Howard

“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?”

Police arrived within minutes and identified flight KQ100 as the plane from which the man fell.

Flight data shows the Boeing 787 passed over Offerton Road at 3.36pm on Sunday at 3,575ft and travelling at nearly 200mph.

It left Jomo Kenyatta International Airport at 9.19am local time and arrived at 3.42pm. Airline officials said a bag, water and a stash of food were found in the plane's landing gear after a subsequent search.

The corpse, which was described as being clothed in a blue t-shirt and jeans, remained at the scene for five hours before being taken away by the coroner's office.

The house on Offerton Road is situated three hundred yards from Clapham Common, which was packed with sunseekers on Sunday afternoon.

Residents have agreed the tragedy could have been much worse if the body had fallen moments earlier onto the busy public area.

The sunbathing tenant's friend, who was inside the house at the time, said it was a miracle the impact did not kill anyone on the ground.

He told the Sun: “He 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 tenant's brother said there was “a lot of blood” at the scene.

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.”

The neighbour, who asked not to be named, said that a plane spotter, who had been following the flight on a plane tracking 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 the body had fallen from a Kenyan Airways flight.

The neighbour said: "The police had four cars. They were here for about five hours to start the clean-up operation."

He said the body was removed at about 8.30pm and that the clean-up team had returned on Monday morning to continue the job.

He added the neighbour that had been sunbathing had returned briefly yesterday evening before leaving again.

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]."

Describing the victim, he said: "One of the reasons his body was so intact was because his body was an ice block."

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."

A post-mortem examination will 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.

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