Dead Ghanaian stowaways were boys who may have played a prank

TWO stowaways who were found dead in the undercarriage of a plane at Heathrow Airport were boys as young as 12-years-old, it was revealed yesterday.

The youngsters, who have yet to be identified, sneaked aboard a Ghana Airways flight from Accra and were dead when the DC-10 plane landed in the UK. They were found by a ground engineer in a wheel compartment of the plane on Saturday.

A police source said: “They must have been absolutely desperate. It’s horrific. They were very young and they musn’t have realised how cold it would get.”

The two African boys were casually dressed with little protection against the bitter cold on the six-hour flight. They were pronounced dead on the airport tarmac.

A post mortem failed to establish a conclusive cause of death and further tests are being carried out.

A Scotland Yard spokesman said: “We believe both boys were aged between 12 and 14 years and of Ghanaian origin. They were casually dressed and were well nourished.

“We are making inquiries to find out the identity of the boys so their families can be informed and we are talking to the Ghanaian authorities to achieve this.”

Detectives believe the two boys may be related and that the tragedy was probably a prank that went wrong.

A source said: “We can’t ascertain whether it was a prank or whether there was an effort to seek refuge in another country. In light of their age or apparent age it looks more likely that it was a prank.”

One boy appeared to be aged about 12 and the other a few years older.

The younger boy was wearing open-toed sandals, a light-coloured top, grey vest and rolled up blue Levi jeans.

The older boy had on a short-sleeved blue polo top, multi-coloured striped trousers and grey Nike-style trainers with the word “peacock” on them.

All they had with them was an empty wallet, an old padlock and two greetings cards from an internal Ghana airline dated 2001.

They climbed up one of the plane’s wheels at Accra and through a tiny gap into a cramped void under the wing where they huddled together. A ground crew at Heathrow found them because part of one of the bodies was visible in the gap they had crawled through.

Detectives are in touch with Ghana police through Interpol and have already spoken to the chief executive of Ghana Airways in Accra. They intend to circulate photographs of the two boys in Ghana to try to identify them. Detective Constable Martyn Paley said: “These boys appeared to have been in a good state of health and I hope they will be missed.”