Johnny Bègue was aware debris he found on the shore could have come from a plane but had no idea it could be wreckage from Malaysia Airlines MH370

In Saint-André, a town on the east of the French Indian Ocean island of Réunion, Johnny Bègue and his team of eight charged with keeping the local coastline clean had begun work at 7am as usual on Wednesday morning. Bègue, a local islander who for three years had headed the team responsible for maintaining the green spaces, had a morning break just before 9am and took the chance to look along the coast for a stone to use as a pestle.

“At around 8.45am, I was walking the shoreline looking for a kalou – a stone which can be used as a pestle for grinding spices,” he said. “That was when I saw some debris washed up on the pebbles. Straight away I called over my colleagues to help me pick up the piece and place it higher up the shore.”



He said that as soon as he saw the strange piece of debris he knew it must have come from a plane. “I immediately thought it was plane debris – the length and curve of it, there were screws on it that hadn’t gone rusty.”

He told his team to take great care when touching it. Then he stopped to think about what to do next. At first he had an idea about installing it as a permanent memorial piece where it was found. “We wanted to set it on the lawn and plant flowers around it,” he explained. He was aware it could have come from a plane crash. But he had no idea of potentially how important the discovery was.

He rang the local radio station. And it was after that call that everything changed. “It was then that the police arrived,” he said. Police officers sealed off the area and began their first observations. Local gendarmes from the air transport investigations team recovered the debris and took it to their headquarters for analysis.

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On Thursday morning Bègue went back to the spot. “When I found the wing debris, I had seen a kind of suitcase in a poor condition near it. I went back to look for it.” When he first noticed the plane debris he hadn’t paid much attention to the fabric case in tatters. But he notified police, and gendarmes came to collect it. Investigators will have to establish whether or not there is any possible link to the debris or whether it was just coincidence.

Bègue says he’s still amazed by the international spotlight turned on him. He never wanted any kind of recompense for the discovery, but hoped maybe there might be a medal if it turns out he and his team really have found the debris that holds the key to the mystery of the disappeared Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.