Missing Nicola Bulley: Dive team pulls out of search as expert is 'baffled' over not finding her in the river stretch
LANCASHIRE, ENGLAND: The underwater search specialist Peter Faulding who was requested by the family of Nicola Bulley's to look for her in the River Wyre is left "baffled" after his team was unable to find her in the river section. He had now pulled off a search of the missing dog walker which police insist is a case of drowning.
Despite "thoroughly" looking for her in the stretch, Peter said she was "categorically not in the river". "At the end of the day, we'll go," he told reporters on the scene. The mortgage advisor is missing since January 27 after dropping her two daughters – aged six and nine – at school. She then took the river path at St Michael’s on Wyre, Lancashire to walk the dog, Willow.
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What did the search team do?
Faulding and his team, from rescue operation Specialist Group International, searched the river stretch around the bench where her phone was found, however, her dog Willow was found on the bench. Police in a press conference said that if she was not found it will not mean she wasn't in the river at some point in time given the strong tidal flow of the river. Following this, they announced their search was extending to the sea.
Paul Ansell, Nicola Bulleys partner met with Peter Faulding after 12 days of search near the scene and spoke of "perpetual hell" of not knowing what has happened, as per Independent. He as per the report spend ten minutes close to the bench overlooking River Wyre.
'I’m totally baffled by this one'
“Normally we find them, this is an unusual situation", Faulding added saying that he wanted to give Ansell, "some confidence that Nicola is not in that river over there." He continued, "hopefully Nicola will appear somewhere or pop up somewhere, I don’t know." Expressing, “But with that, I’m, I’m totally baffled by this one, to be honest".
He said that after checking one small portion of the river later on Wednesday, his team's role in the search will come to an end. Divers from the Coastguard and Lancashire Police's search teams are now concentrating on the roughly 10-mile stretch of river downstream of the bench where the River Wyre flows into the sea at Morecambe Bay, the report said.
'Nothing is making sense'
Nicola Bulley's friend, Heather Gibbons told BBC, "The truth is if we look at it factually, no one knows until we have some evidence." She further added, "I think it's incredibly hard, but up to a certain level, we understand it's human nature. It's natural for everyone to have speculation, because the truth is, nothing is making sense."
She also said, "We have noticed it does feel like some people have come to maybe use it as more like a tourist spot, to do their own personal social media things which in some ways we see and understand but it is hard, there's a lot of people around as it is."
Lancashire Police Superintendent Sally Riley referred to the search as "unprecedented," noting that 40 detectives pursued 500 different lines of inquiry while receiving tens of thousands of pieces of evidence from the general public. The police who have already rejected she could have been a crime victim while also warning the public from breaking into abandoned homes and properties along the area in search of Nicola Bulley.
