Police have given an update on the ongoing search to find missing mum Nicola Bulley - who was last seen alive on January 27 morning.
The mum-of-two was walking her dog Willow by the River Wyre in Lancashire before she was reported missing. Police officers are working on the theory that the 45-year-old , who has been described by friends as a strong swimmer, fell into the river. However, that line of investigation has been questioned by friends and family. Lancashire Police has consistently said that there are no signs of any third-party involvement in her disappearance.
Today, Superintendent Sally Riley staged a live press conference and updated the media and the public. Here is what Superintendent Riley told reporters
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"Good afternoon ladies and gentleman, It's now been 11 days since Nicola Bulley, a 45-year-old mother-of -two, went missing here in St Michaels. It remains and always has been our priority to find Nicola as soon as possible and to bring her back to her family.
"Her family continues to be supported by specially trained officers to update the family daily and support them in other ways. I want to take you through the unprecedented number of inquiries that the police team has been doing in the last 11 days. We've received literally thousands of pieces of information from the public, the wider community, Nicola's family and friends, which we've been combing through diligently. This means at the moment there are around 500 active pieces of information and lines of inquiry that we're working on to try and find answers to Nicola's family.
"We have a team of 40 or so detectives under a senior investigating officer working daily to comb through this enormous amount of information. This is a normal in a missing person inquiry and does not indicate that there is any suspicious element to this story.
"The inquiry team remains fully open minded to any information that may indicate where Nicola is or what happened to her. Some of the specific pieces of information and the line for inquiry that they've been undertaking include house to house inquiries in the village, looking at CCTV, the various pieces of dash-cam that have been submitted to the inquiry identifying and tracing and speaking to key witnesses, a number of whom have come into the inquiry and been spoken to and given valuable information, digital and telephony.
"This includes Nicola's Fitbit and her mobile phone, which has been fully examined. And we've now identified around 700 vehicles that drove through the village on that morning on the 27 January at around 9.10am 9.15am. And we're in the process of speaking to all of those drivers to try and find out if they have any dash cam footage, what they saw on that day or anything else that may be of value to the police inquiry.
"We remain very grateful to all of our partners and the wider community for the help they've given in particular, and I've mentioned some of these in the past. This includes His Majesty's Coast Guard, Lancashire Fire and Rescue, Lancaster Area and Bowland Mountain Rescue, other forces and national experts in different fields, as well as the Specialist Group International or SGI, who have offered their assistance to the family free of charge and have been working under the direction of our local police search teams to help us.
"Our work around the search of the river and the river bank continues - and this includes many pieces of different technical equipment including sonar, pole cameras, drones, underwater drones and so on.
"As I said on Friday, the river is a complex area for search. It's not a still water, it's a fast flowing, moving water that is tidal in parts. And as acknowledged by some of the many national search advisors and experts that we've been consulting throughout, this makes it particularly complex.
"We have already discounted particular areas of the river, but as they are tidal we have researched them to ensure that nothing has been washed back into those search areas. This is why you may see some areas already searched being researched for no other reason than it is tidal. We have six people searching the river banks every day. These are specially trained search officers who are very experienced both in missing people inquiries and in other inquiries who are systematically and methodically searching the riverbank and the open ground.
"We also have a number of divers from the Regional Underwater Search Unit and they are working with SGI and the other partners that I have mentioned to search the river itself throughout this investigation. As I've said, we remain fully open to any information, any information that is credible and factual to try and trace Nicola and bring answers for her family. But it does remain our belief that Nicola sadly fell into the river and that this is a missing person inquiry and it is important to stress that any information that comes in that indicates otherwise is being checked out all the time and negated as each inquiry comes up. We're not closed in any way to any particular line of inquiry and we remain genuinely open to that. All these extensive inquiries, however, have so far not found anything of note. Any indications of physical objects in the river, such as natural debris, trees and the like have been already identified by the original divers and discounted. So further sightings of that debris are only items that we already knew were on the riverbed or in the riverbank.
"We would ask that people in the wider community, particularly on social media and online, do not speculate as to what may have happened to Nicola. This is particularly hurtful to her family, to her children, to her partner Paul, her parents, her sister and her friends because it's not helpful to them. It's distressing and it's distracting for the police inquiry. Nor is it helpful if people, particularly if they come from outside of the area, take it upon themselves to take the law into their own hands by trying to, for example, break into empty property. They may mean well, they may want to help, but they can help in thinking back, if they were in the area to what information they may have of relevance to the police and holding the family and their thoughts. But we will not tolerate online abuse of anyone, including innocent witnesses as members of the family and friends of local businesses or of criminal damage or burglary. And we will be taking a strong line on that.
"As you would expect, we have engaged with and worked shoulder to shoulder with a number of very specific experts, as I mentioned earlier. These include the National Crime Agency who have reviewed all of the police investigations so far and have not identified any other lines of inquiry other than what we had already identified.
"Likewise, we are working with the national search advisor, the police national search advisor, who again has not identified anything in the search strategy or the search area the physical parameters that we have not already explored. And I say this to reassure the local community in particular as well as Nicola's family, that all possible lines of inquiry, search or investigation are being exhausted. I'm just going to reiterate for those who may not have caught some of the earlier detail, some of the key elements of this case that may jog somebody's memory if they were about.
"On Friday morning, the 27 January, we know that Nicola was last seen on the upper field next to the river wire here in St Michael's. At 9.10am. She had taken her Spaniel Willow out for a walk and CCTV that we've looked at shows that Nicola did not leave either the Allotment Lane exit of that riverside area, nor the Rowanwater caravan park, which has been discounted, nor any of the other locked or areas covered by CCTV. As I've said, Friday, this only leaves the path along Garstang Lane onto the A586, which is not covered by CCTV, but the more of those 700 or so vehicle drivers that we can identify who can confirm that they have neither dashcam footage or saw anything on that morning will help us to close that very small gap.
"We can say with confidence, therefore, that we believe Nicola remained in the riverside area. I understand that this is frustrating for those observing the investigation when the river has been searched and Nicola has not been found. That does not mean, however, that Nicola was not in the river at some point due to the tidal flow of the river. For this reason, our search of the river and the river banks extends out to the sea, particularly the area from Knott End, out towards Morecambe.
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"So we continue to appeal for drivers on that morning and I will remind people of Nicola's description, the clothing that she was wearing and her movements on that day. Nicola is a white lady, five foot three, with shoulder length brown hair. She speaks with an Essex accent. She was last seen wearing a knee length black gilet jacket and underneath an Engelbert Strauss black long sleeve jacket to the waist. She was wearing black jeans, long green walking socks tucked into her jeans and green ankle length wellies, she has her hair tied in a ponytail and was wearing a pale blue Fitbit. I have a small number of detail extra to the timeline that I provided on Friday that fills in some of the gaps on the morning that Nicola disappeared.
"They include that at 8.26am - Nicola left her home address with her children. And I know there's been CCTV images from her dashcam, from her doorbell fossil, sorry, that have been released that may jog someone's memory. At 840am, Nicola dropped her children off at school here in St Michael's. At 8.43am, she was seen on the river path towards the gate and the bench on the lower field.
"At 8.47am, someone who knows Nicola saw her walking along the lower field with her dog and the two dogs briefly interacted together. At 8.53am, she sent an email to her boss. At 8.59am, she sent a message to a friend. At 9.01am, she logged onto a team's call and at 9.10am, we had the last confirmed sighting of Nicola on the upper field walking her dog. We know from telephony that her phone was located on the bench at 9.20am. At 9.30am the Teams call ended, but Nicola's phone stayed logged in and at 9.33am approximately, her phone and her dog were found by another witness who doesn't know her. I would ask people to dig back into their memory 11 days ago to that morning and to phone us on 101 or if there's a sighting of Nicola on nine nine nine or I do now have an email address for direct contact into the investigation room for us to receive emails.
Details of this are published on our website. I just want to end by holding Nicola's family in our thoughts. This is an agonising time for them, particularly her two little girls who are only six and nine. Very, very distressing for them not to have found Nicola and to ask everyone to remain constructive cooperative with the inquiry, not to do anything that would thwart us and hold us back from trying to find Nicola as quickly. As possible to remain respectful to each other in the search. That's including the inquiry team and the local people for whom this is also very difficult. This is a tight knit community of people have come out in force, as have our partners. And I would thank them again very much for their work so far."
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