Police divers have returned to the river where Nicola Bulley drowned, months after her heartbreaking death.
The 45-year-old was reported missing on January 27, after dropping her two daughters - aged six and nine - off at school. She then went for a walk around River Wyre in St. Michael's on Wyre, Lancashire with the family dog Willow.
At approximately 09:00 AM Ms. Bulley - who worked as a mortgage adviser - logged onto a Microsoft Teams call. It ended about 30 minutes later, but she apparently stayed logged onto the call.
A passerby discovered Ms. Bulley's frantic dog at 10:30 AM and noticed a phone had been abandoned on a bench beside the river.
Lancashire police revealed soon after that one of their working hypotheses was that Ms. Bulley had fallen into the River Wyre and that this was "not suspicious but a tragic case of a missing person". On February 20, Lancashire Police told the public in a press conference that a body found in the river was indeed that of Bulley following formal identification.
"Today's development is not the outcome any of us would have wanted but we hope that at least it can begin to provide some answers for Nicola's loved ones. They remain foremost in our thoughts. The case is now being handled by His Majesty's coroner," a spokesperson for His Majesty's Senior Coroner Dr James Adeley said at the time.
Peter Faulding - a specialist diver who was working on the case - spoke multiple times to news outlets about how he believed this hypothesis was incorrect. In fact, he spoke to the Daily Mail prior to Bulley's body being discovered in the river, and was quoted as saying: "'I have this natural ability to find things" and "if she was there, I would have found her."
The Times then later reported that law enforcement sources confirmed Faulding's Specialist Group International (SGI) had been suspended while a review is carried out and he has been removed from the NCA's Expert Advisers Database (EAD).
However, Ms. Bulley's case is far from over. The Sun has reported that divers have now returned to the area to determine the mother-of-two's exact cause of death. A spokesperson for Senior Coroner told the outlet: "We can confirm we are carrying out some work on the direction of His Majesty's Coroner [...] The investigation will take time to complete to ensure that as complete a picture as possible of the facts concerning Ms Bulley's death is presented at the inquest."
"This will assist the family in understanding what occurred," the statement continued.
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