The diving expert who worked on the Nicola Bulley case has issued a statement following news a body was found in the river near where she went missing.
Bulley disappeared on January 27 while walking her springer spaniel Willow near the River Wyre, St. Michael's On the Wyre, Lancashire. She had just dropped her two daughters - aged six and nine - off at school and was logged on to a Microsoft Teams work call at around 09:00 AM.
The 45-year-old mortgage advisor's team call ended roughly 30 minutes later, but she reportedly remained logged on. A passer-by found Bulley's phone on a bench next to the river at 10:30 AM, as well as her dog who was allegedly running around in a distressed manner.
In the days following her disappearance, Lancashire police and forensic experts revealed that one of their working hypotheses is that Bulley had fallen into the River Wyre and that this was "not suspicious but a tragic case of a missing person".
Forensic diving expert Peter Faulding - CEO and founder of diving group Specialist Group International - and his team were tasked with scouring the River Wyre for Bulley's body, following Lancashire Police's hypothesis that the mother had drowned.
At the time, Faulding told Talk TV (via The Daily Mail) that he's "truly baffled" by the case, and doesn't believe she fell into the water - adding that if she'd drowned her body would have been recovered.
"After 25 years of doing this kind of work, after hundreds of cases, I am well and truly baffled. Normally you would expect the divers to find them easily," Faulding stated, further explaining that when a person drowns they "generally go down where they are", with search teams normally finding their bodies within five to 10 meters of where they fell in.
On February 8, Faulding and his team pulled out of the search, having not come any closer to locating Bulley.
This weekend, however, a body was located in the River Wyre, according to a statement released on the Lancashire Police's official Twitter account. "This morning, Sunday, 19 February, you may be aware of police activity around the river near to St Michaels. We want to provide you with an update on that activity. We were called today at 11:36am to reports of a body in the River Wyre, close to Rawcliffe Road," the statement read.
"An underwater search team and specialist officers have subsequently attended the scene, entered the water and have sadly recovered a body. No formal identification has yet been carried out, so we are unable to say whether this is Nicola Bulley at this time [...]
"Procedures to identify the body are on-going. We are currently treating the death as unexplained. Nicola's family have been informed of developments and our thoughts are with them at this most difficult of times. We ask that their privacy is respected," the statement continued.
Following the information, Faulding has spoken out about the discovery, saying (via The Independent): "All I can say is when we searched she was not on the bottom of that river [...] We weren't searching the reeds, our job was to search the water."
Our thoughts are with Nicola Bulley's family and friends at this difficult time.
