Boy, 16, found dead in Boston 'may have fallen from a plane'

A 16-year-old North Carolina boy whose mangled body was found outside Boston, Massachusetts, last week may have fallen to his death from an airplane.

Police have been unable to explain why Delvonte Tisdale, a high school student who ran away from his home in Charlotte, North Carolina, would have been in Milton, Massachusetts, some 850 miles away, where he had no known ties, and have asked airport officials to investigate whether he could have stowed away in an airplane.

"We have been asked to provide some information about flight tracks and flight approaches that go over that community," said Phil Orlandella, a spokesman for Logan International Airport. Some planes approaching the airport fly over Milton, Mr Orlandella said.

Police are investigating whether Tisdale may have hidden in the wheel-well of a commercial aircraft. That part of an airliner is not pressurised, making it unlikely Tisdale would have survived the thin air and freezing temperatures. Investigators think that he may have fallen from the aircraft when its landing gear dropped on the approach to the airport. Friends said they thought he was trying to get to his mother's home in Baltimore.