On the morning of January 27, while Nicola Bulley walked her dog alongside the River Wyre in Lancashire, British police are aware that she was engaged in a business conference call.
According to police superintendent Sally Riley, who was quoted in a Newsweek article on Wednesday, she had been on a Microsoft Teams call when her dog has discovered nearby the river at around 9:30 that morning.
The CBS News reports that Riley said as divers continued their search, “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.”
A diving specialist, Peter Faulding who disputes the contention says that in the area where police were searching, his sophisticated equipment failed to detect any trace of the 45-year-old mother of two.
In a report by Newsweek, Faulding said early in the week that “the amount of searching that’s gone on in this river, I would have thought she would have been found by now.”
“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.”
He said in an interview with Good Morning Britain, the Daily Mail reports, “I think there’s probably a third party involved. None of this rings right to me. My belief is she’s not in the river at all.”
“There are two young children there waiting for their mummy to come back,” Bulley’s father, Ernest, 73, said, expressing concern that someone might have “got her,” as reported by CBS.
In a report by BBC, Authorities extended their search closer to the river mouth, downstream from St Michael’s on Wyre, where police initially thought Bulley fell into the river, as this week went on and police divers found no sign of Bulley.
The Daily Mail reports added that 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.
Finding Bulley “in the open water becomes more of a possibility,” according to a Lancashire Police statement, according to Sky News. Police are working to quell rumors on social media about what happened as they continue their search.
Police said it has dispersed those filming close to local properties, as they are investigating “grossly offensive” comments online. Sky News added that police have issued a 48-hour dispersal order has been invoked, with “a number of people warned about their behavior.”
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Sources: WesternJournal, Sky News, Daily Mail, BBC, CBS News, Newsweek