Police are having a difficult time identifying a man who fell from the sky. Back in September, a man mysteriously fell out of the sky from a plane and landed in a West London neighborhood. Now police are trying to figure out who this stranger was.
Residents of Mortlake, London were shocked to find the body of a black man lying on the sidewalk near a shopping area. At first police though he was murdered, but upon further inspection, they found that the man had fallen from a jet when it lowered its landing gear as it approached Heathrow Airport, according to the Associated Press.
The man had no identification on him, but he had money from Angola, making police believe that he came from Africa. This also matched up with information about a plane that came from Angola and landed at Heathrow around the time that the man fell.
Residents said it was common for planes to lower their landing gear near the neighborhood. Catherine Lambert was one of the residents who was shocked when she found the body of the man in her neighborhood.
"You could see him, his body was contorted," Lambert told the Associated Press. "It was a beautiful blue day, really sunny, but we had to keep the children inside. I didn't want the children to see, and to have to explain to them and put fear into them every time a plane goes over."
Lambert is still saddened by the man's loss and the fact that nobody can identify him.
"I felt, what was he running away from? What made him think he could he could? And how will his family ever know? He's a lost soul now; his father and mother are probably waiting for him to make contact," she said.
Residents continue to leave flowers and local Angolans hold prayers at the area where John Doe was found.
Police are now asking the public to help them identify the mystery man who fell from the sky. They created a composite image of his face and a photo of a tattoo that he had on his left arm, which included the letters Z and G.
To see the computerized image, Click Here.
They're also been in contact with the police in Angola but they cannot identify the man either and they said that there was not enough evidence to prove that he was actually from Angola.
The information that the police do have is that the man is believed to be African. He was between the ages of 20 and 30. When he was found on Sept. 9, he was wearing jeans, a gray sweatshirt, and jeans.
While it is extremely rare for anyone to fall from the sky, stowaways are pretty common. There has been a rise in the number of stowaways to Western Europe lately. The stowaways often hide in the undercarriage of planes.
Poor security at various African airports has made it easier for people to hide on planes, but not every attempt is successful.
"They so often end in fatality because more often than not stowaways climb into the wheel base or cargo hold, and those areas are not necessarily pressurized," Aviation safety specialist Chris Yates of Yates Consulting told AP. "When you start moving beyond 10,000 feet, oxygen starvation becomes a reality. As you climb up to altitude, the issue becomes cold as well, the temperature drops to minus 40 or minus 50 degrees centigrade, so survival rates drop."
It is believed that the unidentified man was already dead when he fell. Yates thinks he probably lost consciousness and died within an hour after takeoff.
Residents of the area said that this isn't the first time that this sort of event has happened. They're just not sure if it happened a few years ago or a decade ago.
"People say the same thing happened a few years ago a few blocks away" Jay Sivapalan, 29, who works near where the body landed told AP. "We are near Heathrow and when they lower the landing gear, the body falls out."
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