Dead boy may have fallen from plane

[NickN]

Very interesting story, rather unusual....

BOSTON: Police in Massachusetts say a teenage boy found dead on the street in a Boston suburb may have dropped from a plane's wheel well, an official said.

Severe trauma to the body and the town of Milton's location under a flight path to Boston's Logan Airport made a fall from an aircraft a distinct possibility, the official said.

Milton police said the teenager's body was identified as that of Delvonte Tisdale, 16, of Charlotte, North Carolina.

Advertisement: Story continues below
Authorities were investigating ''every possibility regarding how Tisdale came to be found dead'', said a district attorney's spokesman. Reports said he had run away before.

Stowaway cases usually end in death, according to aviation safety specialists.

Passenger jets typically cruise at altitudes of at least 9000 metres, higher than the 3000-metre standard for the use of supplemental oxygen.

Temperatures at a plane's cruising altitude can plummet to minus 45 degrees or colder.

A finding that the boy stowed away on an airliner would make the case at least the second this year.

A man's body was recovered on February 7 from the wheel well of a Delta Air Lines jet after arrival in Tokyo from New York.

http://www.smh.com.au/world/dead-boy...124-187hi.html