How often do plane stowaways fall from the sky?
Police are investigating whether a man found dead on a west London street was a stowaway who fell from a plane. Just how often does this happen?
No-one saw the body fall from the sky on to Portman Avenue.
A few neighbours thought they heard something, a thud or a loud bang. But not a soul was around to witness a man hit the pavement of this quiet residential street in Mortlake, south-west London, early on a bright September Sunday.
Police say the death is being treated as unexplained. But early media reports all shared the same assumption - that he had stowed away in the landing gear of a plane flying to Heathrow, less than 10 miles away.
"He must have come down pretty much vertically to miss the parked cars," says John Taylor, 79, who heard a thump from his home across the street in this placid, affluent suburb. "I expect he was dead already. Poor chap must have been desperate."
