Man, who fell from Kenya Airways jet, landed just feet away from a sunbather, neighbour says

A body that landed in a south London garden was a stowaway who fell from a plane as it came in to Heathrow airport.

Police were called to Offerton Road in Clapham at 3.39pm on Sunday following the discovery of a body, believed to be that of a man. Their work continued throughout Monday.

Kenyan Airways confirmed initial reports that the body fell from the landing gear of an inbound flight that it was operating from Nairobi to Heathrow. A bag, water and some food were found in the plane’s landing gear compartment when it arrived at the airport, the Metropolitan police said.

A postmortem will be carried out in due course and the age of the individual has yet to be determined. The death is not being treated as suspicious.

A next-door neighbour, who asked not to be named, told the Press Association that the man fell just a metre from a resident who was sunbathing in his garden. “I heard a ‘whomp’. I went upstairs to look out of a window,” he said. “At first I though it was a [homeless person] asleep in the garden.

“He had all his clothes on and everything. I had a closer look and saw there was blood all over the walls of the garden … 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 had landed one metre away from him.”

The Clapham resident said a plane spotter who had been following the flight on an app from Clapham Common had seen the body fall, and arrived almost at the same time as the police – who arrived swiftly to put in place a crime scene.

“The police had four cars,” he added. “They were here for about five hours to start the clean-up operation.” The body was removed at about 8.30pm and the clean-up team had returned on Monday morning to continue, he said.

“I spoke to Heathrow airport this morning to ask if they were aware of this,” he explained. “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.”

Police are conducting inquiries and will liaise with the airline and international authorities. A Heathrow spokesperson said: “We are saddened and shocked by this incident and our thoughts are with everyone affected.

“As a priority, we are working with all relevant stakeholders, including the police, Kenyan Airways and Kenyan authorities, to establish the facts surrounding this.”

Kenya Airways said in a statement that the aircraft had been inspected and that no damage had been reported. “The 6,840km (4250-mile) flight takes eight hours and 50 minutes,” a spokesman said. “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.”

In 2012, Jose Matada fell to his death from a British Airways flight inbound from Angola. Matada, originally from Mozambique, was found on the pavement in East Sheen, south-west London, on 9 September.

An inquest into his death heard that he was believed to have survived freezing temperatures of up to –60C for most of the 12-hour flight. But he was understood to be “dead or nearly dead” by the time he hit the ground.

In 2015, the body of a man landed on a shop in Richmond. He appeared to have clung on in the undercarriage of a plane from Johannesburg in South Africa to Heathrow.