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Liverpool Echo
Liverpool Echo
World
Lottie Gibbons

Nicola Bulley underwater search expert doesn't believe she is in River Wyre

An underwater search for missing Nicola Bulley will today focus on where her phone was found.

The search for Ms Bulley, 45, is entering its 11th day after she went missing on January 27 in St Michael's on Wyre, Lancashire.

Ahead of private underwater experts beginning their second day of searching the River Wyre on Tuesday, Peter Faulding of Specialist Group International said he did not think the missing mother was in the water.

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He added that his team of divers would go back up the river today, to search once again near the point where Ms Bulley's mobile phone was found on a bench.

Speaking on BBC Breakfast, Mr Faulding said: "The initial searches yesterday were downstream in the tidal section of the river, not the key area where Nicola originally went missing.

"Today we are focussing on the area upstream which is non-tidal and going about a mile upstream."

He added: "We are going to go back over the area just in case. We don't know for certain that Nicola is in the river but if she went further enough she could drift down by now.

"We are going to go back over the original area that was searched twice by the police. Sonar will image the river bed and see everything that's laying down there, sticks, stones, everything, so if Nicola is there we will find her."

However, Mr Faulding later told Radio 4's Today programme: "The initial area where Nicola went in, where the bench is, the police thoroughly searched that the same day, and did it again days later.

"From all my experience, I would expect a body when it goes down and drowns, to go straight down to the bottom, and remain there until the body starts to decompose and then it will start moving."

He added that there is not enough of a current in the River Wyre, where police believe Ms Bulley may have fallen, for her to have been moved downstream on the day she went missing.

The group, which is based in Dorking, Surrey, and has been volunteering its services free of charge, has been using specialist sonar equipment to look for Ms Bulley.

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