Kenya claims that a stowaway who fell from the wheel arch of a flight to Heathrow and landed in a south London garden was likely a worker at Nairobi airport.
Gilbert M. Kibe, the country’s Civil Aviation Authority chief, said the man would almost certainly need legal access to the airport in order to skirt around security and get into the plane.
However, Mr Kibe was unable to identify the man, who plunged 3,500ft before landing just 3ft away from an Oxford graduate who was sunbathing in his garden.
The man who fell 3,500ft from from a Heathrow-bound flight and landed in a south London garden was likely an airport worker who used their pass to skirt security, Kenyan officials say (pictured, the crate left where the man hit the ground)
John Baldock was left ‘shaking and trembling’ and ‘unable to speak’ after the frozen body landed just 3ft away from him while he was sunbathing.
Neighbours of Mr Baldock, who rents a room in his colleague’s £2.3million townhouse in Clapham, south London, described hearing an ‘almighty bang’ on Sunday afternoon before seeing the ‘really shaken up’ software engineer call police.
One resident said: ‘He’d been in the garden when it happened and the body must have landed so close to where he was. My husband came back in and I asked him what was going on. He said: “Haven’t you seen the man? The man who fell from the sky?”
John Baldock was ‘shaking and trembling’ and ‘unable to speak’ after the frozen body landed just 3ft away from him while he was sunbathing at his home in Clapham
‘I wondered what he was talking about and went up to see for myself and there in the middle of the lawn was a body of a man.’
The stowaway is thought to have already been dead before falling from a Kenyan Airways flight approaching Heathrow. The impact left a huge crater in the grass and smashed concrete paving slabs to pieces.
Now it has emerged that since the traumatic incident Mr Baldock has been staying with his parents Michael and Phi in Exeter, Devon. The London property is owned by his 29-year-old colleague Bob Renwick – a co-director at software company Plexi.
Mr Renwick bought the four-storey home on affluent Offerton Road last December. Speaking outside the house on Monday night, his brother said he was there to help deal with the aftermath.
He said of Mr Baldock: ‘He’s gone back home to his parents’ house. He’s obviously very shaken up. He wasn’t hurt but it was a narrow miss. The garden isn’t very big. It was a lot of blood. It wasn’t pretty. It was the tenant who called the police after he had witnessed it.
‘It caused a significant amount of damage to the garden. From our point of view, to be honest, we are still in shock about it.’
A neighbour told The Sun: ‘I saw John outside, he was shaking and trembling. He wasn’t saying anything. He could hardly speak.’
A relative of Mr Baldock, who did not want to be named, said last night: ‘I imagine he is quite traumatised.’ She added: ‘John is very academic, studied hard and went off to Oxford. He’s a bit geek-chic, he’s got lots of friends. I think he is doing well at his company now. His father was a professor and lecturer living in Australia and met his mother, who is Filipino, there. I think she was a school teacher. They started a family then sold up and came to settle in the UK when the children were young.
‘They started a newsagents and worked very hard to give their Jonny and his younger sister the best start in life. It seems to have paid off.’
Neighbours of Mr Baldock, who rents a room in his colleague’s £2.3million townhouse (pictured) in Clapham, south London, described hearing an ‘almighty bang’ after the body fell
It has now emerged that since the traumatic incident Mr Baldock (pictured) has been staying with his parents Michael and Phi in Exeter, Devon
Mr Baldock is a senior software engineer at Plexi, which provides scheduling technology for vets.
He was privately educated at Exeter School where fees cost up to £14,000 a year and graduated from Oxford University with a master’s in engineering. Mr Renwick developed the firm’s software. He directs the company along with his brother, 31, and father Peter, 63.
The tech entrepreneur has an economics degree from University College London and a master’s in computing science from Imperial College London.
The parents of Mr Baldock and Mr Renwick did not wish to comment yesterday. The dead man has not yet been identified. Police are not treating the death as suspicious. Flight data shows the Boeing 787 Kenya Airways flight passed over Offerton Road at 3.36pm on Sunday at 3,575ft and travelling at nearly 200mph. It left Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi at 9.19am local time and arrived at 3.42pm, having travelled 4,250 miles.
Police said a bag, water and a stash of food were discovered in the plane’s landing gear after a subsequent search.
Stowaway attempts on planes are incredibly risky, with only an estimated one in four surviving the journey. Those involved often die from extreme cold when the plane is at altitude or fall to their deaths when the landing gear compartment is opened.
Others are crushed by the landing gear folding back into the plane after take-off.