The investigation into missing mum Nicola Bulley remains ongoing after an expert underwater search team's involvement ended.
Peter Faulding, an expert diver, and his team completed their three-day search at St Michael’s on Wyre on Wednesday, February 8. Mr Faulding met Nicola's partner Paul Ansell and told him she had still not been found.
Mr Faulding's independent Specialist Group International (SGI) firm were drafted in earlier this week to aid Lancashire Police divers with their high-tech sonar equipment. However, he told the Mirror the team completed scouring the area of river from where Nicola's phone was found - and where investigators theorise she likely fell in on January 27.
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The mortgage adviser, 45, vanished on January 27 after dropping her two daughters – aged six and nine – at school, then taking her springer spaniel Willow for a walk along the river.
Mr Faulding said: "We’ve done our job and we’ve cleared the areas that we were tasked with by Lancashire Police and we are happy that there is nothing in that water." However, Mr Faulding emphasised that does not mean Nicola did not go into the water, with different search teams expanding out towards the estuary and sea at Morecambe.
On the eve of beginning their efforts on Sunday, he said he was confident if she had fallen in by the bench and drowned, her body would have been snagged within 500 metres. Mr Faulding continued: "Along with our searches and the police dive searches along that particular stretch of river from the weir up to the caravan park we are 100 percent confident that Nicola is not in that stretch of water.
"Going down river, we’ve searched an area to a bridge. We could not find anything at all in that stretch of water after many long hours. We’re doing this long days, and the police search continues to search the river down to the sea."
Asked how Nicola's husband Paul was today, Mr Faulding said he's "clearly upset". He added: "He was stunned, really. He just wants to know where his partner is. He’s an upset man.
"The family just wanted to come up and talk to me and see progress and how we’d done and Paul wanted to go up to the bench again to see the area. I walked up with Paul and explained to him this is where we’ve searched and I told Paul that we’d cleared from the weir up to about another mile up river, a long way up the river."
He said Nicola's family was "grateful" for the work SGI did - which they offered completely free of charge - but "it's difficult". Police said the search for the mum-of-two will continue.
Search teams from Lancashire Police and the Coastguard, including divers, are now focusing on the 10 miles or so of river downstream of the bench, where the River Wyre empties into the sea at Morecambe Bay. Superintendent Sally Riley, of Lancashire Police, described the search as “unprecedented”, with 40 detectives following 500 lines of inquiry, with thousands of pieces of information coming in from the public.
And officers were trying to trace dashcam footage from 700 drivers who went through the village on the morning Nicola disappeared. But Supt Riley ruled out criminal or third-party involvement and on Tuesday reiterated the police’s belief that Nicola had fallen into the river, with her body still unrecovered and police treating the incident as a missing person inquiry.
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