The U.S. military has found the body of an adolescent male trapped in a compartment above the landing gear of a C-130 aircraft following a trip to Africa, the Pentagon said on Tuesday.

The Pentagon said the body was found at Ramstein Air Base in Germany during a routine post-flight maintenance inspection on Sunday. The plane traveled from Germany to Senegal, Mali, Chad, Tunisia and Sicily before landing in Ramstein on a trip that lasted just over a week.

"At this point, it is unknown where or when the deceased entered the landing gear wheel well," Kirby said, describing the apparent stow-away as "an adolescent black male, possibly of African origin."

As concerns swell over an outbreak of the deadly Ebola disease in several African countries, the military also confirmed that the body was tested for communicable diseases. Those tests came up negative.

"The cause of death, as well as the other circumstances surrounding this incident, remains under investigation," Kirby said, adding the body had been taken to a German facility for an autopsy.

Kirby acknowledged that airfield security would be examined during the investigation but stressed U.S. military C-130s often land in remote locations around the world.

"The aircraft is a rugged aircraft designed to operate in austere locations. It shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody that security at some of these fields is not going to be at the same level," Kirby said.

I guess we need to make arrangements to bring them all here safely so this doesn't happen again. They are just escaping disease, violence, corruption, and poverty. That should certainly entitle them to a free trip to the United States and a free living on our dime.

I guess we need to make arrangements to bring them all here safely so this doesn't happen again. They are just escaping disease, violence, corruption, and poverty. That should certainly entitle them to a free trip to the United States and a free living on our dime.

The yellow oval is around the area above the main gear wheel well. The purple arrows point to the tracks for the main gear (don't pivot or swing, go up and down vertically) and jack screws that raise and lower the main gear. The holes where the main gear struts pass through the overhead in the gear well are not really large. There's a hydraulic motor that turns the horizontal shaft the turns the 90� gearboxes for the jack screws. Not much area and Ramstein has J models now that probably fly close to 30k altitude. If the kid had hidden in the nose gear well the flight engineer sure didn't do a good preflight plus he/she still had to install the nose gear pin after flight and remove it before take off (unless things changed).

How old was this "child"?

Was he an actual child or was he like one of the southern border crasher "children"? (30+ yrs old, riddled with gang tats and 4 lbs of cocaine stuffed up his ass in sammich bags)

How old was this "child"?

Was he an actual child or was he like one of the southern border crasher "children"? (30+ yrs old, riddled with gang tats and 4 lbs of cocaine stuffed up his ass in sammich bags)

.....I have word that he was a Young Nigerian Gentleman, trying to re-unite a long lost relative with a small fortune bequeathed by a distant relative.

....frustrated by the slowness of the servers in Lagos' internet cafes, he'd resolved himself to becoming a courier, and deliver the goods personally.


....I just hope it's not the funds I have coming from Nigeria any day now.



GTC