What was it?
Nobody knew.
Soon word went round that there was a body lying on the street. A black man with a horrendous head injury, actually the head was split open and not much was left of it.
When the police came they found a mobile phone and a SIM Card in his pocket along with some currency from Angola. He had tissue paper in his ears and grease all over his body.
Where had he come from and how did he die?
After a check by the British Police they discovered that a British Airways plane from Angola had flown over the same place at the exact time that he fell from the sky. He was a stowaway hidden in the tyre compartment and had fallen off when the tyres came out for landing.
Mystery Of His Identity
No identification was found on him and the mobile phone found on him was locked to a local network in Angola. His face was shattered beyond recognition.British Doctors did a complex face reconstruction surgery, at least to have an idea of how he looked like. This surgery was successful but the mystery remained-who was he?
On the SIM Card police found 7 phone numbers one of which was a Swiss phone number. They attempted calling the number several times but nobody was picking the call.
Breakthrough!
Several weeks passed and then the owner of the Swiss number called back. When Police told her about a dead stowaway in London she obviously did not know anything about it but when they mentioned that the plane was from Angola she immediately started crying saying: "I know who it is!"His name was Jose Matada a Mozambiqan citizen.
The woman is Jessica Hunt she was his employer in South Africa. Joseph used to work for her as a gardener and house help,they later became very good and close friends. When Jessica returned to Switzerland she sent some money to Jose in South Africa to help him secure a visa to Europe. But Joseph was duped by corrupt agents and he lost all the money then he became desperate and moved from Mozambique to South Africa, then Botswana and Zambia and then to Angola.
By this time Jessica was newly married and pregnant and did not have the means to help him. The last she heard from him he was in Luanda, the capital city of Angola.
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| The Tatoo On His Arm |
No one knows how or why he became a stowaway.
"What could have made him do it?...If you offer me 5 million Pounds I wouldn't do that...What must have been going through his mind to do that? I really would like to know why he did it". Asked James a resident of Portman.
It is now known that Joseph was born on 9th September 1986. He died on the 9th of September 2012, exactly on his 26th birthday.