Nicola Bulley has been missing since January 27 with no sign of her whereabouts, and her family has revealed that her young children have been asking heartbreaking questions after seeing police helicopters.
The mum-of-two, 45, was last seen taking her dog Willow for a walk by the River Wyre in St Michael’s on Wyre, Lancashire after she had dropped her daughters off at school.
Authorities were called at 10:30 AM, around an hour after she was last seen, after a concerned member of the public spotted Bulley's dog by itself in an agitated state, per the Daily Mail.
There has unfortunately been no trace of Bulley since that morning despite extensive searches in the area where her dog and cell phone were found, and this is naturally taking a heavy toll on her loved ones.
Her daughters, nine-year-old Harriet, and six-year-old Sophia have been attending Saturday morning clubs as well as having sleepovers with friends to try and take their minds off of the search for their mom, as reported by the Daily Mail.
In the days that followed Bulley's disappearance, her partner Paul Ansell said that he was asked "agonizing" questions by the young girls who wanted to know why their mother hadn't come home.
Speaking to the Mirror, Bulley's father Ernest said: "When I look at the kids, I have to go out of the room because I can't hold it together. They are asking where Mommy is and when is Mommy coming home? It's so hard."
Now, in a video shared by Sky News, six-year-old Sophia is seen spotting a police helicopter in the sky and uttering the heartbreaking words: "Them helicopters, they're looking for mommy."
The family is rallying around the children in order to keep the routine as normal as possible, but Bulley's father explained: "We don't know how long we can keep going before they realize, they think mommy is coming home soon, but if this keeps going on and on I don't know where we are going to go or what to say to them."
Ansell also spoke out for the first time on February 3, stating that it seems "absolutely impossible" that his partner has not been found, before adding: "I just can't believe that we're a week on, and as yet, it seems like we're no further on. it just seems absolutely impossible, just like a dream. I can't get my head around any of it," via Sky News.
Forensic diving expert Peter Faulding has disputed the police's initial theory that Bulley fell into the river, implying that the specialist diving teams would have discovered her by now.
"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," he told Talk TV (via The Daily Mail).
The specialist diver has since pulled out of the search as of today (February 8), stating that someone who has drowned is normally found "within meters" of where they fell in.
Our thoughts remain with Nicola Bulley's loved ones.
