Investigators say that a man’s headless body was discovered inside an office building air conditioning unit after he fell 1,400 feet from an airplane when the “undercarriage he was clinging to opened,” reported the Mirror .
On June 18, 2015, 29-year-old Carlito Vale, who is believed to be one of the children taken to an orphanage during the Mozambique civil war, was travelling on a British Airways flight from Johannesburg to Heathrow when the undercarriage he was clinging on to had flung open, sources say.
Headless body of an African stowaway was found in an office block air conditioning unit after plummeting 1,400ft… https://t.co/EZ3aiEQgDU
— missmaybell (@missmaybell) April 28, 2016
Vale fell 1,400-feet to his death, landing on the air conditioning unit on the rooftop of an office building, where an online shopping store called “Not on the Highest Street” was located.
The stowaway’s headless body was later found by the office manager Michael Bentley at approximately 9:45 a.m. after receiving complaints about the air conditioner.
Bentley stated that “at around 8:44 a.m. I received an email from colleagues claiming the air was stuffy and that they were falling asleep at their desks. I went up to the roof to check the air conditioning unit. I saw what I can only describe as a bone sticking out of the smashed aluminum.”
“At that point I thought I really hope that’s not a body up there as it could only have come from a plane. I looked in and saw a foot, then a leg, then saw it was a human face down inside the unit. I emailed my manager and said ‘I think I’ve found a body on the roof.’ He said, ‘what do you mean?’ I said ‘no jokes, there’s a body up there.’”
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The office manager’s boss, Jason Weston, released a statement saying that he “would describe the body as wearing some sort of Converse trainers; I only saw one foot and a leg that was wearing some sort of blue or gray trousers.”
“All I could see was lumps of matter and bones that had smashed the metal housing of the air conditioning unit.”
Gunnie Mooneesawmy, who was the first officer on the scene, stated, “I got onto the roof via the skylight. I was directed to the aluminum box at the end where I could see lots of blood and body parts and two human legs stuck up in the air.”
Another officer, Steve Lemon, described the gruesome scene, saying that when he “got to the roof I saw a gentleman’s lifeless body in the air conditioning unit. It appeared the body had fallen from the sky at great height.”
“Due to the height it had fallen and the force on the landing of the body, it was completely decapitated and had smashed through the metal panels.”
“There were no other buildings at that height and no other way for him to get up there as the security door was intact,” Lemon continued. “There was no identification on the body. Colleagues at Heathrow Airport informed me there was a stowaway found in the landing gear of BA flight 056 that landed at 5:20 a.m. from Johannesburg and he was in a critical condition.”
According to Times Alive , Vale’s body wasn’t identified until his bag, which was left at the Johannesburg airport with a “Mozambique passport and an out-of-date US visa,” was found.
It was later discovered that another stowaway, 24, fell from the plane as well but survived the fall. He was discovered after the fall and treated at a local hospital, where he is listed in critical condition. However, it was reported that the stowaway disappeared after he was discharged from the hospital.
No foul play is suspected in the death of Carlito Vale, as a local medical examiner Dr. Michael Heath stated that the “cause of death was multiple injuries. And the senior coroner Kally Cheema recorded a verdict of accidental death.”
[Photo by Getty Images/Jordan Mansfield]