The Man Who Fell to Earth Our World

Police were able to piece together the extraordinary story of his

tragic death, thousands of miles from home. Some viewers may find

parts of this story upsetting. Early on the morning of September

nine, 2012, the body of a young man was discovered on this street in

south`west London. I was in bed and a heard a bang. I wondered what it

was. I opened the door and I saw the man. No one knew how he got there.

Along came forensics in their white coats and cameras. As it went on in

the morning, more police arrived. But detectives had no idea how he

died. Initially it was difficult to work out what happened to the sky.

`` this guy. Nobody knew who he was always he had come from. We did not

know whether he had parents or children. That really would be nice

to resolve. This is the story of a true life mystery that spans two

continents, seven countries and took more than 1.5 years to unfold. He

was a really good person. He had a really soft matter about him. I miss

him. It will be another sunny and hot a

foremost, 24`27. Approximately 745 I heard a thump and I thought nothing

of it and went back to sleep. The next thing I can remember is my

brother worked me up and said there is a man in the street and he is

dead and there is police outside. He was a black tie wearing a pair of

sneakers, jeans and a T`shirt. By then the police had closed off

the road, both ends. And cornered off an area, 30 metres away from my

house. I could see the front door and I could hear all of this

commotion. I thought, what on earth is going on outside. I could see

police. I wondered what it was. I opened the door and I saw the police

and I saw the man's body. It was a shock, obviously. We thought that he

had been murdered them. His body was twisted and his head had split open.

I have seen people murdered in the street before, stabbed and shot.

This man looked like he had been hit extremely hard. I thought this was a

traffic accident. But it was a quiet residential street, not a busy

thoroughfare. He would have had to go over the bonnet and the roof onto

the pavement. What started out as a crime scene that looked like the guy

had been murdered, I noticed they kept on looking up at the sky. The

planes were close enough that I can actually see the wheels being

lowered. The way it looked, it looked like he had fallen. We were

directly under the flight path. On Sunday there would be a flight to

Heathrow every couple of minutes. It was a very clear day. One of the

officers said that this has happened in the past, stowaways. It came over

the police radio. A flight from Angola had flown over the location

at about that time. The penny dropped, really. The guy has got

serious injuries. It indicated that perhaps he has fallen from an

aircraft. What became clear is that this man had stowed away in the

undercarriage just before takeoff and as the plane flew over this

street on approach to landing, that is the point at which the wheels are

lowered and he fell. The question is why he took such an extraordinary

risk. The only clues to his identity were a mobile phone and sim card

tucked inside the pocket of his trousers. That is what the police

focused on. He had no identity or documents on him. No passport,

obviously, but nothing to identify him as a person. Not even his

country of origin. The flight was from Angola. He had Angola and

Botswana currency in his pocket. It was all a bit conflict. Certainly

pointing to Africa. He had a distinctive tattooed on his left

arm. It was very crude, quite big. It was a DIY tattooed. We tried

through research and checking on Google to see if that would help us.

To see if that were the initials of a football club or anything, but it

did not help. I have been a coroner for nearly 14 years and have dealt

with five or six similar cases of stowaways falling from an aircraft.

We are under a flight path at Heathrow. Sadly I expect we may see

more of those in the future. It has effectively long`term really. I have

had bad dreams about it ever since. When a plane comes over, I do get

nervous. When I can see the undercarriage coming down, I think,

is it going to happen again? It would be better if you were able to

contact the family and tell them the obviously sad news, but better than

them being anxious about his whereabouts. Sadly there does come a

time where we are unable to identify people and in those cases we ask the

local authority to arrange a funeral. We do not like having to do

that. We do what we can do ask the right questions. It is a body found

in a street, unidentified and we should let the relatives know what

has happened. That is like reality. By this point the police

investigation was stalled. The man's phone is locked and police

attempts to get the data came to nothing. Police turned their

attention to the sim card they had found on him. The rectory was the

sim card in his pocket. It included information about a text message

that he had sent to another number and some stored data. The

interesting thing was the text message sent to a mobile phone is

registered in Switzerland. I tried calling the number and I did not get

an answer back. One evening that number came up as an incoming call.

The policemen on the phone told me that there was a stowaways and this

unknown person had fallen from the plane in Richmond. I did not know

what he was talking about at first. She was like, why it a talking to

me, why would I know? Suddenly, the penny dropped and there was a total

change in her demeanour. I told him, I knew who it is. I cried on the

phone to the policemen. I was in shock, complete shock. He has got it

had to on his arm, a Z and AG. He was given a name in our alphabet. It

is written with AG. She was living in South Africa with her then

husband. He was our gardener and was taking care. The man whose body was

found after falling to the ground from the undercarriage of a plan has

been identified. He was a 30 rolled Mozambican National called Jose

Matada. After he finished working for me, we travelled together. I

went with him to Mozambique. We grew very close to one another. He

converted to Islam, so he was a Muslim. I am a convert to Islam. We

were like family. I was trying to help him find work for him. I knew

that his family did not have a lot of means. Also I cared for him. I

have known him for several years. He was a really nice man. He was a

really good person. He had a soft manner about him. I miss him. He

told me about his childhood and how difficult it has been. His father

died of illness. Troubled week he was about five or six at this point.

`` probably. There were floods in Mozambique in his area. There were

scavenging for food. I asked him if he would like his life to be written

down in a book one day. He said he would love that, because people

would know how hard it had been for him. She remembered in September he

sent messages indicating that he needed help. I wish he had called me

before taking the plane, so I would have told him, get out of that

plane, don't go inside it. We don't know how Josie Mercado got into the

airport in Rwanda, but we do know that this is how he travelled to

London, and he would have had to climb up as quickly as possible

along this piece of metal and into the real arch. `` wheel arch. He

would have done it at night, and it would have been dark. I wonder if at

this moment he had second thoughts, and thought he had made a terrible

mistake. The first major risk to stowaways comes after takeoff,

because at that point, the wheels retract up and fill most of this

space. As the plane climbs, the temperature will fall to `60

degrees, the oxygen would have been, and at some point over the

next eight hours, he would have lost conscience. People do it by entering

a state of hibernation. They become chilled in the aircraft very

rapidly, and enter a state of hibernation, where the oxygen

requirements are much lower than normal. There is a period at which

they may be able to survive. Was telling him it was very cold in my

country, but I don't he understood, or he grasped just how cold it is,

and I don't think he knew that an altitude like that is extremely cold

. My opinion is that he would have been dead or close to dead when he

struck the ground. There were some breathing around the injuries, which

indicate that he may have had a lower level of heart activity, some

blood, when he hit the ground. It is inevitable he would have died, even

if he hadn't fallen out. As the plane was coming into land of

London, these doors here would have opened, the Wills would have come

back down. Prosaic still unconscious would have been unable to hold on.

`` Jose. At the point the plane was passing over he would have fallen

out. He landed right on the pavement, he didn't hit a car or

anything. Just like X marks the spot. It is upsetting for anyone who

comes into contact. You think, he had such high hopes, and he was

obviously more mystic and he should have been. I just thought, what have

you done? Why did you get onto that plane, why would you more patient?

But, we are Muslims, so we believe that when it is your time to die it

is a time to die. The police in London have been in touch with the

authorities in Mozambique, but have been told there is no trace of Jose

Matada. That means his family have not yet been found, so he has been

buried in this unmarked grave just a few miles from where he fell to

work. As far as we know, his family have no idea about what has happened

to him. Perhaps they are still waiting to that call to say that he

is safe, and that he has found that better life that he was looking for.

I do think about it a lot, I just think it is awful, that it is

horrible to think that he has a family and they don't know what has

happened to him. It would just be fascinating to find out why he did

it, what was going through his mind. Somewhere, a mother, father,

brother and sister, or even children, knows he is missing. There

will be a mother somewhere who desperately wants to know what has

happened to her son. It is now 15 months since Jose

Matada was found dead in Portman Avenue, and we have come to

Mozambique because we have heard of a new development. His family have

come forward and identify themselves to the authorities, so we are

heading to the outskirts of Maputo, the capital, to meet them.

Jose Matada wasn't alone in leaving Mozambique in search of a job and

better opportunities, because most of his friends also headed to South

Africa, and many families here and many families here in this

neighbourhood reliant on relatives sending back money from abroad. What

was different about Jose Matada was the extraordinary risk he took in

search of a different life. The question is, what drove him to do

that? This is what I suppose we will never

know. Jessica told us that she loved Jose Matada, but like he was a

member of her family, and nothing more. His brother believes he was in

love with her, and that was what was driving him, that was what was in

his mind when he boarded the plane. I suppose we can save a certain that

as far as Jose Matada was concerned, there was no future for him here, in

Mozambique. If you have outdoor plants through

the weekend, things are looking pretty cool, showery, and all in all

quite unsettled. Blustery showers affecting many parts of the UK.

There will be a cool wind, especially in the south. There will

also be some sunshine in between those showers. We start off on a