Police find body believed to be Florida man who fell from plane

Police believe they have found the body of a man who fell 2,000 feet from a plane flying off the Florida coast.

Around 10:30 a.m. Saturday, the Miami-Dade Police Department Homicide Bureau found a body near the shore in a mangrove area just south of Northeast 184th Street in Miami. Police had earlier identified the man who fell from the plane as Gerardo Nales, 42, of Key Biscayne, an island town off the Miami coast.

“Even though we presume that the body found is that of Gerardo Nales, investigators are pending ‘official identification’ from the medical examiner’s office,” Det. Alvaro Zabaleta said in a statement released to the Los Angeles Times.

Police have been investigating an incident that happened Thursday afternoon in which a pilot reported that a man had opened the door of his small plane and had fallen or jumped out.

The incident happened about eight miles southeast of the Kendall-Tamiami Executive Airport, Coast Guard public affairs specialist Mark Barney told The Times. On Thursday, the police department, Coast Guard and a Miami-Dade Fire Rescue helicopter were searching for the man, to no avail.

Police said Friday that they were planning to end the search for Nales on Saturday afternoon if he hadn’t been found yet.

The plane had just taken off from Tamiami, Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen told The Times. It turned around and landed safely. The airport, about 10 miles southwest of downtown Miami and 30 or more miles southwest from where the body washed up, generally serves small jets.

The passenger and the pilot were the only people aboard the plane, the communications director for the Miami-Dade Aviation Department, Greg Chin, told The Times. Chin said that it was a private aircraft and that its flight was authorized.

Earlier this month in California, a man jumped 500 feet to his death from a helicopter as it flew over the Newport Beach shoreline.

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Twitter: @skarlamangla

soumya.karlamangla@latimes.com