When he slammed down on Portman Avenue early on a Sunday morning last September, the thud was loud enough to stir awake some residents in London's otherwise tranquil Mortlake neighborhood.At daybreak, when the first passers by happened upon his crumpled frame, it was presumed, at first, that the man had been brutally murdered--an oddity for Mortlake, a district "generally free of crime and congestion," according to the Associated Press. Hours later, to the horror and general bum-out of the community at large, it was ruled that the mystery man, who'd stowed himself away on a passenger plane, had actually plummeted to the ground below when the plane's landing gear accidentally lowered. Three months later, his identity remains unknown. Mortlake, meanwhile, remains traumatized, suspended in a state of shock and sadness over the almost unfathomably grisly, out-of-clear-blue-sky incident.It's a common, if perilous enough occurrence, though, this stowing oneself away for a cheap airlift, and then falling to Earth. And in somber similarity to Richard Drew's Falling Man, the most famous 9/11 photo you've maybe still never seen, we're given some solace in the fact that presumably the man was dead--or at the very least, unconscious--by the time he hit the ground. Chris Yates, an aviation specialist, told the AP that cargo holds and wheel-bases, two spots frequented by airborne stowaways, typically aren't pressurized. So it's more than likely that the man lost consciousness and died within the first hour of the flight."When you start moving beyond 10,000 feet, oxygen starvation becomes a reality," Yates explained. "As you climb up to altitude, the issue becomes cold as well, the temperature drops to minus 40 or minus 50 degrees centigrade, so survival rates drop."But to complicate matters, London's Falling Man carried no identification on his person, save some Angolan currency, and a shred of an arm tattoo. Thus even still more like 9/11's Falling Man, London's unknown Falling Man has opened up the same sort of questions and grief and pained dismissal over the death of a stranger, grapplings that are rocking, even dividing, Mortlake.In the hours and days immediately following the grim discovery, some left flowers and tokens and prayers at the site of impact."I felt, what was he running away from?" Catherine Lambert, 41, who lives just a few doors down from the man's final landing spot, told the AP. "What made him think he could survive? And how will his family ever know? He's a lost soul now; his father and mother are probably waiting for him to make contact."Still others silently and promptly tore down the memorial over fears that "an unwanted, permanent shrine to the unknown passenger" would take hold in Mortlake."Is this about the man from the sky?" said another woman when approached by a reporter while she parked her car along Portman Avenue. "I don't want to talk about it. That was my house."I am never flying again.Top: E-FIT image (Electronic Facial Identification Technique) showing computer-based face of the falling man whom British police are trying to identify (via Metropolitan Police)Reach Brian at brian@motherboard.tv. @thebanderson
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