Mysterious case of the man who fell from the sky on a Sunday morning

Police believe he was from Africa, probably from Angola, but they don’t know his identity.

The mystery began in September when residents of a suburban street in the Mortlake neighbourhood of west London woke up on a quiet Sunday morning to find the crumpled body of a black man on the path of Portman Avenue, near a supermarket, an upscale lingerie shop, and a storefront offering Chinese medical cures.

Detectives believed at first the man was a murder victim and cordoned off the area. Within a day, however, police concluded the man — probably already dead — had fallen to the ground when a jet passing overhead lowered its landing gear as it neared the runway at nearby Heathrow Airport.