“A gate technician in the landing gear area noticed two males who appear to be Signal 7, advised they are not moving in the landing gear area,” an unidentified individual said over a police radio during the incident. "Signal 7" is a police radio code used to describe a dead body.
The flight departed Jamaica earlier in the day, leading to some speculation that the men who died are Jamaican, though there has been no official identification.
An anonymous law enforcement source told CNN that the bodies were badly decomposed when they were found, which, if true, likely indicates that the stowaways were onboard the aircraft for multiple flights.
If they climbed into the landing gear compartment in Jamaica, they likley did not survive the plane's first stop. The A320 departed from Kingston just after 1 a.m., where it flew to JFK International Airport in New York. It was below 30 degrees the day the men were discovered, and would have been much, much colder at higher altitudes