British police know that Nicola Bulley was on a work conference call on the morning of Jan. 27 as she walked her dog along the River Wyre in Lancashire.
The rest is a mystery.
At a little after 9:30 that morning, her dog was found near the river, and her cellphone was still connected to a Microsoft Teams call she had been on, police Superintendent Sally Riley said, according to a Newsweek report on Wednesday.
“Our main working hypothesis, therefore, is that Nicola has sadly fallen into the river, that there is no third-party or criminal involvement, and that this is not suspicious, but a tragic case of a missing person,” Riley said as divers continued their search, according to CBS News.
A man has reported seeing a red van parked near the spot where Nicola Bulley was last seen.
I bet Lancashire Police told him they’re not interested in any vehicle that isn’t ocean-going . . . or, at the very least, amphibious. 😆 pic.twitter.com/fROnIRFUfa— Positively4thStreet (@Positively4thS) February 9, 2023
The contention has been disputed by Peter Faulding, a diving specialist who says his sophisticated equipment failed to detect any trace of the 45-year-old mother of two in the area that police were searching.
“The amount of searching that’s gone on in this river, I would have thought she would have been found by now,” Faulding said early in the week, according to Newsweek.
A private underwater search expert looking for missing mother Nicola Bulley has said his team is pulling out of the hunt as she is “categorically not” in the area of the river where detectives believe she fell in.
Read more: https://t.co/aFpRKjOzQX pic.twitter.com/oCTrA76WZ4
— Sky News (@SkyNews) February 8, 2023
“Normally when a person drowns, if they are left a number of days, they don’t move very far. This is not a fast tidal river. So I would have expected her to be found by the police divers by now.”
“I think there’s probably a third party involved,” he said in an interview with Good Morning Britain, according to the Daily Mail. He added: “None of this rings right to me. My belief is she’s not in the river at all.”
Bulley’s father, Ernest, 73, has said he was afraid someone might have “got her,” according to CBS.
“There are two young children there waiting for their mummy to come back,” he said.
As this week moved on, and police divers found no trace of Bulley, authorities shifted their search closer to the mouth of the river, downstream from St Michael’s on Wyre where police initially believed Bulley fell into the river, according to the BBC.
Riley said she believes Bulley’s clothing could have weighed her down and made it difficult for her to escape the water after she fell in, according to the Daily Mail.
Path not covered by CCTV among 10 mysteries over Nicola Bulley’s disappearance https://t.co/fnW6wqrfxM
— Daily Mail Online (@MailOnline) February 9, 2023
A Lancashire Police statement said finding Bulley “in the open sea becomes more of a possibility,” according to Sky News. As the search has continued, police are trying to put a damper on social media speculation about what took place.
Sorry; say what now? People are actually travelling to take selfies by the bench involved in the Nicola Bulley case??
Jeez. One can be forgiven sometimes for thinking eventual annihilation by asteroid is too good for us.
— Lady Oriel 🇪🇺 🇮🇪🇬🇧🍸🏉 (@peskydogooder) February 9, 2023
Police said they are investigating “grossly offensive” comments online and said it has dispersed those filming close to local properties.
A 48-hour dispersal order has been invoked, with “a number of people warned about their behavior,” police said, per Sky News.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.