Inquest Hears Body Found In Street 'Fell From Plane'

The body of a man found on a pavement in west London almost certainly fell from a plane, an inquest has heard.

West London coroners court heard that José Matada was either dead or at the point of death due to hypothermia and lack of oxygen when he fell from the plane as its undercarriage opened for its descent into Heathrow airport.

Believed to have originally come from Mozambique, Matada died on his 26th birthday, with a single pound coin in his pocket.

His body was found on the pavement of Portman Avenue, in East Sheen, an affluent west London suburb, shortly before 7.45am on 9 September last year, just after flight BA076 from Luanda, the Angolan capital, passed overhead.

Giving evidence, Robert Chapman, a Home-Office-registered consultant forensic pathologist who examined Matada's body, said that while the stowaway was only wearing light clothes he seemed to have survived the bulk of the 12-hour trip from the south Atlantic coast of Africa through being young and very fit, though low oxygen levels and temperatures of down to -60C in the unpressurised wheel recess of the Boeing 777 would have left him unconscious.

"In my view he was either very close to the point of death or, indeed, dead when he struck the ground," Chapman said.

(H/CD)