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2 bodies are found in the landing gear of JetBlue plane

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Two bodies were found in the landing gear compartment of a JetBlue aircraft at a South Florida airport, the latest security breach involving the nation’s aviation system, authorities said.

The bodies were discovered in the wheel well area during a routine post-flight inspection on Monday night at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, the airline said in a statement to The Associated Press.

The aircraft had arrived in Fort Lauderdale shortly after 11 p.m. from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York.

“At this time, the identities of the individuals and the circumstances surrounding how they accessed the aircraft remain under investigation,” JetBlue’s statement said.

“This is a heartbreaking situation, and we are committed to working closely with authorities to support their efforts to understand how this occurred,” the airline added.

Paramedics declared both people dead at the scene, the Broward County Sheriff’s Office said Tuesday. The agency’s homicide and crime scene units are investigating, it said.

Both are believed to be men, said Carey Codd, a spokesman for the Broward County Sheriff’s Office, told the AP.

“Beyond that, their identities at this point are unknown, and that is some of the information that Broward sheriff’s office detectives are trying to sort out at this point,” Codd said.

“Detectives will investigate and research all aspects of this particular incident, trying to figure out where the flight originated from, where else it had been, the circumstances under which the individuals got onto the plane,” Codd added.

Though its most recent flight was from New York to Fort Lauderdale, the jet had been in both Kingston, Jamaica, and Salt Lake City, Utah, earlier on Monday, according to the flight tracking service FlightAware.com. Authorities haven’t said where they think the people got into the wheel well.

In Jamaica, the plane’s recent stop in the Caribbean nation gave rise to speculation that the people could be Jamaican, a government official said on social media.

However, “our information to date is that this matter still remains unclear and there is no immediate basis on which to conclude that they are Jamaicans,” Kamina Smith, minister of foreign affairs and foreign trade of Jamaica, said in a post on the social platform X.

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