Dive expert says he has 'proof' Nicola Bulley never fell into a river
Diving expert who led search for Nicola Bulley shares video of motionless river as ‘proof’ missing mother didn’t fall in
- Mother-of-two, 45, vanished while walking her dog in St Michael’s on Wyre
- Read more: Detectives probe mystery missing two-hour gap in disappearance
A diving expert who led the hunt for missing Nicola Bulley claims he has video ‘proof’ she did not fall into the river.
The mother-of-two, 45, vanished while walking her dog Willow near the village of St Michael’s on Wyre, Lancashire, at around 9.10am on January 27.
Detectives believe she slipped into the River Wyre and drowned. But her loved ones have questioned this theory, saying there is ‘no evidence whatsoever’ she fell into the body of water.
World-renowned forensic diving expert Peter Faulding – who has worked on hundreds of cases with police – says a clip shows the river is slow-moving meaning her body would have sunk ‘very quickly’ and remained near to where she fell in.
The 60-year-old also claimed she could have simply ‘stood up’ if she had fallen in as rocks by the bank would have only been under 2ft of water at the time.
Ms Bulley pictured with her dog Willow during a walk. She was walking her pet when she went missing two weeks ago
Peter Faulding, a diving expert, was drafted in to help find Ms Bulley and has today insisted a video showing the slow-moving waters of the River Wyre ‘proves’ she could not have fallen in
Speaking of the video footage, Mr Faulding added: ‘The log stayed at that point for 20 minutes, and it actually spiralled and went up six feet and came back to the same place.
‘The river on the day was slightly higher – it was about a foot higher – but I’d be very surprised in my experience [if she was there] as a body usually goes to the bottom very quickly.
CLICK HERE: Search for Nicola moves from the river to the sea as boats trawl Morecambe Bay
‘If Nicola slipped down the bank, she would have landed in about 2ft of water but onto rocks, and she could have stood up.’
Peter, who runs Specialist Group International (SGI), led a sonar search for the Nicola in the river, which flows from the Forest of Bowland to Fleetwood and into the Irish sea.
But the group later called off its search, with the expert insisting they had done all they can to find the missing mother.
Mr Faulding has now called on the force to carry out a ‘wider land search’ of outbuildings and sheds.
As the hunt for Nicola enters a 14th day today, police have moved the search to the sea, with boats now trawling Morecambe Bay.
Meanwhile, friends of the missing 45-year-old have gathered to join a roadside appeal to mark two weeks since she vanished.
A clip revealing a barely-moving log on the water, shows Nicola’s body would have likely sunk ‘very quickly’ and remained nearby if she’d gone in, forensic dive expert Mr Faulding claims
Friends of missing woman Nicola Bulley hold missing person appeal posters along the main road in the village in St Michael’s on Wyre, Lancashire
The 45-year-old mother-of-two was last seen on January 27. Pictured is one of her friends on Friday, February 10, during a missing person appeal
On Wednesday, Peter took Nicola’s shattered partner Paul Ansell to the bench where their dog, and her mobile phone, were found on the day she vanished.
And the diving professional, who has solved hundreds of cases, said Paul now believes ‘Nicola has not gone in that river’ 13 days after she was last seen.
But the lack of a body raised hopes that she might still be alive.
He said: ‘He’s very upset and he was in tears yesterday. He’s very emotional, obviously.
‘He was shocked at how shallow the rocks were yesterday. He thought it was really deep there. If she had gone in she would have landed on the rocks.
‘The family thanked us for being here. They said “You’ve given us confidence now” and his belief is that Nicola has not gone in that river.’
Peter added: ‘We’ve gone about a mile upstream, which is way up the search area, and ruled there is nothing in that section of the river.
Ms Bulley – a 45-year-old mother-of-two – went missing near the River Wyre on January 27
A CCTV image of Ms Bulley wearing a long dark jacket and boots prior to taking her two young children to school
‘If you start putting the pieces of the jigsaw together, it’s very strange, and it would need an extremely strong current on the day to take her so quickly over the weir before the police arrived.
READ MORE: Now police looking for Nicola Bulley issue blanket 48-hour dispersal order in village where mother went missing after amateur sleuths started searching abandoned house along river at centre of mystery
‘And if she was floating, she would have been seen by the public, or landed elsewhere – and there’s just no sign of this poor lady.’
Lancashire Police is still working under the hypothesis the mortgage advisor slipped into the water and drowned.
Two boats with specialist police teams are now searching the coast off Morecambe Bay, around 20 miles from where Nicola was last seen, with police suggesting finding her ‘in the open sea becomes more of a possibility’.
This week it emerged Investigators could be trying to trace a ‘tatty’ red van parked near to where the mother-of-two vanished two weeks ago, after a witness reported it to police on two occasions.
Detectives are also probing a two-hour gap between Nicola’s disappearance and the first call to police to report her missing – as it emerged three key CCTV blindspots had been identified.
The first call about her disappearance did not come until 11am – leaving a near two-hour window between her last sighting and officers beginning their search.
Police admitted she could have left the area via a path not covered by cameras.
A map of the area showing the location of the broken camera, the path leading to Garstang Road that is not covered by CCTV (top right circle) and a riverside path leading from the Wyreside Farm Caravan Park through to the A586 (left circle)
This is the area police have been searching for almost a fortnight but there is no sign of Ms Bulley
A group of men from Liverpool were apparently dispersed by police as they tried to search this property
The path in question leads to Garstang Road, which runs through the village, and is therefore a blindspot.
Officers have been attempting to trace dashcam footage from 700 drivers who passed along the route at the time of her disappearance.
Aside from the river itself, there are only two other exits from the area, one of which is covered by CCTV.
Friends of the missing mother have claimed that CCTV covering the other exit, close to mobile home site Rowanwater, is not working.
This camera would have covered the fields to the south of where Ms Bulley was last seen.
After reviewing other CCTV footage from within the mobile home site, police are confident that Nicola did not leave the field near the river via Rowanwater itself.
Another blindspot is a riverside path leading from the Wyreside Farm Caravan Park through to the A586.
Police officers walk past the bench where Ms Bulley’s phone was found shortly after her disappearance
Paul Ansell, 44, pictured with diving expert Peter Faulding, who told the anxious father ‘she’s not here’, during a third extensive day of searching along the River Wyre in Lancashire on Wednesday
A camera at a house close to the path is also understood to have not been working at the time, but did not cover the exit regardless.
Friends of the missing mother-of-two will today be hitting the streets in an effort to ‘jog anybody’s memory’.
Friend Emma White told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Friday: ‘The local community are coming out again today to just raise that profile, trying to jog anybody’s memory, dashcam footage of Garstang Road, which is just outside of the village of St Michael’s on Wyre, just by the bridge that you go over.
‘It is quite a key part of the village so people would remember going over it. Did they see anything?
‘We’re out with banners, we’ve got placards of Nikki’s face, we’ve got a moving eight-foot LED board with her face on it with the message ‘Bring Nikki home’.
‘We just need Nikki home for her two beautiful little girls who need their mummy.’
Ms White said the search had been ‘like torture’.
She told the Today programme: ‘It is just a rollercoaster, it is almost like torture – the despair, the unimaginable frustration in the sense that everyone has come together, working so hard: the police, the community, people on the ground.
‘You expect to be rewarded for when you put hard work in, so we just need something, anything, a piece of information that can lead us down a different inquiry.’
Ms Bulley’s partner Paul has described the ‘perpetual hell’ the family is suffering as they await news, with her daughters asking: ‘Where’s mummy?’
Lancashire Police have dismissed any suggestion Ms Bulley is a victim of crime and say the scale of the missing person inquiry is ‘unprecedented’, involving 40 detectives and following 500 lines of inquiry.
Officers have since been given extra powers to break up groups causing a nuisance in the village amid reports of people travelling into the area and filming properties on social media.
The order will remain in place for 48 hours and gives officers the power to disperse anyone committing anti-social behaviour.
Police had previously warned members of the public not to ‘take the law into their own hands’ by breaking into empty or derelict riverside properties to try to find Ms Bulley.
Nicola is white, 5ft 3ins tall, with light brown shoulder-length hair. She speaks with an Essex accent.
She was last seen wearing a long, knee-length black quilted gilet with a hood.
She had a black Engelbert Strauss coat underneath which had long sleeves and came to her waist.
She was wearing tight black jeans and had long green walking socks tucked into her jeans. She was wearing size 5 ankle-length green wellington boots from Next.
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