The body of a suspected stowaway fell from an aeroplane and narrowly missed a software engineer sunbathing in his back garden, it has emerged.

John Baldock, an Oxford University graduate, was asleep when the man’s body violently plunged into the ground only three feet away.

One neighbour said yesterday that the impact was so loud they thought a bomb had gone off. Another saw “blood all over the walls” of the garden.

Mr Baldock was last night recovering from the experience at his parents’ home in Devon. One close relative told the Telegraph that he had been “extremely traumatised” by the experience.

Police believe that the unidentified dead man hid himself inside the landing gear of a Kenya Airlines flight from Nairobi in an attempt to reach Britain. His body fell from around 3,500 feet as the plane lowered its wheels before landing at Heathrow after a nine hour journey. A bag, water and food were later found on board.

A large crater was visible in the garden of the home in Clapham, south London, yesterday. It appeared that the man's body had plunged through a tree before landing partly on concrete paving slabs and an astroturf lawn.