BOSTON (AP) — A Massachusetts prosecutor said Friday it's likely that a North Carolina teen whose mutilated body was found in a Boston suburb fell from the sky after stowing away in an airplane wheel well.
Norfolk District Attorney William Keating said police searched the area Friday in Milton where the body of Delvonte Tisdale, 16, was found last month, and they found sneakers and a shirt matching clothing Tisdale's family said he'd worn.
The items were found along a path a Boston-bound plane would have taken while approaching the city, he said.
Authorities decided to go public with their evidence that Tisdale was a stowaway because the apparent breach of airport security was such a serious public safety issue, Keating said. He said he'd informed the TSA, and expected them to thoroughly investigate.
"It's a terrible tragedy what happened to this young man," Keating said. "But if that was someone with a different motive, if that was a terrorist, that could be a bomb planted on there undetected."
Tisdale's body was found by a group of college students less than 24 hours after he was last seen in Charlotte, N.C.
Tisdale was a member of the Air Force ROTC program at Charlotte's North Mecklenburg High School. His father, Anthony, said the family had moved from Greensboro to Charlotte in the summer just so the teen could join that program. Anthony Tisdale said his son was happy in Charlotte and stayed out of trouble.
But the Delvonte Tisdale's brother, Anthony Tisdale Jr., said his brother was unhappy in North Carolina and had never wanted to leave Baltimore, where he had lived earlier.
