A forensic expert leading a private dive team assisting in the search for missing mother Nicola Bulley has expressed doubts about the police theory that she fell into the River Wyre. Peter Faulding, founder of Specialist Group International, brought in high-spec sonar equipment worth £55,000, claiming it can locate a body 'within minutes' if she is in the river.
Faulding told The Mirror: 'If Nicola is in there, we will find her. If she's there, our sonar will pick her up straight away. I will see a body on the bottom.' He added that his team deals with about ten drownings every summer and always locates within the hour. However, he noted that the shallow depth and cold water could have taken her breath away, but she might have been able to get out.
'Normally people would scream out and I don't know if there was other people in the area but you'd scream out, you'd flap around and the dog would normally maybe stay with the owner. There's something, in my opinion, not quite right here,' Faulding said.
Ms Bulley's partner, Paul Ansell, reiterated that there is 'no evidence yet to suggest any scenario over another and all options must be kept wide open'. A friend of the missing mother, Emma White, said she hopes the specialist teams uncover nothing, as that would rule out the police's theory. White told ITV's Good Morning Britain: 'We hope they uncover nothing, like the police have done for the last ten days, and we hope Nicola is not in that river.'
White praised Faulding's equipment as more sophisticated than police kit, saying: 'We don't want to undermine all the work police have done but when you get that glimmer of hope and you look at what the company does, his records and what he has achieved then you think we need to get this expert here.'
