It's Raining Men

[Astrocloud]

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/sto...p-271169c.html

Stowaway's body
parts rain down

Leg falls from African flight onto L.I. garage

BY AUSTIN FENNER and LAURA WILLIAMS
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS




A man's severed leg - with a white Adidas sneaker still attached - plummeted from the sky onto a garage roof and bounced into the backyard of a Long Island home yesterday morning.
Pam Hearne heard "a very loud bang" outside her family's South Floral Park house at 7a.m., but thought little of it and went to work.

It wasn't until she got back home at 10:30 a.m. that she noticed something bizarre out her window.

"There was a human body part back there," she said. "It was rather large."

The leg, hip and chunk of torso apparently fell from the wheel well of a South African jetliner about to land at Kennedy Airport.

When Hearne first saw the leg in the grass, it didn't look real. But authorities assured the special education teacher it wasn't a "cruel joke."

"It was very blackened, as if it had been charred," she said.

The victim, apparently a stowaway, likely crawled into the wheel well of the South African Airways jet in Dakar, Senegal, authorities said.

After taking off from Dakar at 11:40 p.m. New York time, the pilot felt some unusual vibrations. But a diagnostic check turned up nothing unusual, and the flight continued to Queens, said Nassau Police Detective Lt. Kevin Smith.

A customs inspector discovered more human remains - including another leg - in the wheel well after the jet landed, said Port Authority spokesman Tony Ciavolella.

"The body was badly battered, the clothing shredded," Smith said. "And the plane was battered from the body parts."

Floral Park is about 5-1/2 miles from Kennedy - just the spot where a pilot would likely lower the landing gear.

The cause of death was under investigation, pending a medical examiner's report, Ciavolella said.

There have been several cases of airplane stowaways being killed by the extreme cold at high altitude or crushed to death inside aircraft wheel wells.

The landing gear rotates inward as the wheels retract and outward for landing. It was unclear how far the leg fell but the impact dented the shingled roof of the garage.

"I guess it was some poor soul who dreamed to look for his freedom," Hearne said. "I'm hoping he wasn't in much pain."

"He took a chance and he lost," said Anthony Coetzee, 43, of South Africa, who was waiting for a flight home yesterday.

The South African Airways flight to Johannesburg was canceled yesterday.

A letter distributed to passengers by the airline made no mention of the body. It simply said that the jet needed to be repaired because of "some damage to the fuselage."

The thought of this is pretty gross. Still, I imagine that if one could avoid the cold and bring their own oxygen supply -it might well worth the 14 hour trip. Now if there were only somewhere that I could go...

[stevie667]

I saw this on the BBC newsite a few minutes back.

Grimey.

[Ustwo]

Hallelujah!

Had to be said

[Cuatela]

wouldn't it make more sense to hide in the luggage compartment? It might be just as cold/unpressurized, but it's better than being crushed by a wheel.

[Cynthetiq]

read about this this morning...

people can get access to supposed restricted space??? that's a bit more concerning to me than the fact that body parts fell on someone's house....

[maleficent]

Originally Posted by Cynthetiq

read about this this morning...

people can get access to supposed restricted space??? that's a bit more concerning to me than the fact that body parts fell on someone's house....

Amen to that...

If a person could get in there and hide in a wheel well, what else could be put in there...

[diddagirl]

I heard about this today at work. Makes no sense to me how someone could possibly think that they would survive in a wheel well. Thats just so crazy to me.
And god damn...imagine being that lady who found the leg! I would about fall over and faint!

[flat5]

He (?) might have got the idea from movies. For instance 'Commando', one of Arnie's.

[MSD]

It would be hypocritical of me to criticize the tasteless title (I love it,) as the first thing I did when I heard the news story (pulling a customer's car into the garage and waiting for the car in front of me to pull out) was to start humming and air-guitaring Slayer's "Raining Blood."

The idiot got what he deserved, I just hope that not many children were traumatized.

The cause of death was under investigation, pending a medical examiner's report, Ciavolella said.

I can save them a lot of time and money on this one.

[Demeter]

It's sad that some people feel so desperate as to go to such extremes. And I'm sure the homeowner is traumatized. That's just so unnerving. I wonder how many people have died & fallen into the ocean that were never noticed?