TV research reveals the man used to work for Colnet Cleaning Services, the company that sent him and others to various clients at the airport.
He earned Sh300 a day, lived in the slum and was still full of ambition. Seeming desperate, he decided to try his luck abroad, albeit through the back door.
He climbed onto the landing gear of a KQ plane to fly without papers and pay – a suicidal adventure.
A friend with whom he rented a one-bedroom Mabati house in the slum told Sky News he does have ambitions for a better life abroad.
“He was a friend, we went to the same county, we went to the same school. He was looking for a job somewhere … but not in Kenya,” he told Sky News.
“I don’t know if he flew,” he said.
The news station found the woman the man had proposed to.
She identified the images of a small backpack bag, underwear and shoes – which London Metro Police recovered from the spot where the stowaway fell – as belonging to her fiancé.
They had been in a relationship for two years and had plans to break up, the article said.
The TV reporter learned from an airport taxi driver that Colnet Cleaning Services went missing a male employee at the end of June.
“[The taxi driver] selected the information [about a missing Colnet employee] by a few employees who spoke up about it,” the article said. This would be the clue to finding the roots of the man who fell from heaven.
“He never showed up for work in the morning. Nobody knew where he had disappeared. I called his phone, it was off,” the fiancé said.
“The next day the supervisor called us and said, ‘Someone is missing, but we are not sure of the person. So we’re keeping it a secret until we know the person,'” she said.
Upon seeing pictures of the man she dated for two years, she said, “I just feel like I’ve lost someone I loved so much.”
She broke down when she saw pictures of his belongings, which she positively identified.
Sky News contacted the parents in Kakamega. They said neither the police nor airport authorities have contacted them about their son.
“Nobody has reported it,” said the father.
“I don’t know where to start or end because it’s his [the son’s] “The phone isn’t working,” his mother said when asked if they had tried to look for her son.
She said she wanted his body brought home and buried on her family’s land… “but the cost.”
(Edited by V Graham)
