The partner of missing Nicola Bulley has told Sky News she “has to be found safe and well” because “I can’t put my girls to bed again with no answers”.
The mother-of-two went missing in Lancashire on the morning of Friday 27 January while walking her dog.
Officers’ “main working hypothesis” is that the 45-year-old fell into the River Wyre near to the village of St Michael’s on Wyre.
But her family and friends have claimed there is “no evidence whatsoever” behind this.
In a statement, released through Lancashire Police on the 10th day since she was last seen, Ms Bulley’s partner, Paul Ansell, said the girls “miss their mummy desperately” and “need her back”.
“This has been such a tough time for the girls especially but also for me and all of Nicola’s family and friends, as well as the wider community and I want to thank them for their love and support,” he said.
In a separate statement to Sky News, he said: “We have to find her safe and well. I can’t put those girls to bed again tonight with no answers.”
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It comes after Specialist Group International’s dive team joined the search on Monday morning after the company originally offered its help on social media.
SGI’s chief executive, Peter Faulding, told Sky News: “Let’s get this water searched so it can be either confirmed or denied if Nicola is actually in this river.”
He said his company’s £55,000 side-scan sonar has a high frequency of 1,800 kilohertz and “we’ve got a very high hit rate” with the equipment.
Police also have a side-scan sonar but “our sonar is probably a bit more superior”, he said, adding: “I’m not sure what frequency they will be using.”
Mr Faulding said it was a “particularly long stretch of river” for police to search “because they’re doubling up as a dive team as well”.
“So it is a huge task for the police.”
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“It’s a vast area of water” so there will be “more hands on deck”, he said.
He said he had “worked on hundreds of these cases, and we always, generally find people within the hour in lakes etc”.
“We’re just bringing an extra expertise.”
Mr Ansell praised SGI for joining the search, adding: “We are really grateful to Peter and his team from SGI for coming up and helping support the work of Lancashire Police as they continue their investigation.
“If anyone has any information which could help find Nicola, I urge them to get in touch with the police and help us provide the answers we all so badly need.”
How will SGI help?
Mr Faulding said the SGI team will be tasked in the morning by the police search adviser with looking in a specific stretch of the river.
He explained: “Once he says ‘I want this piece of river searched’ it will be down to me to actually search that piece of river with my team.
“So they won’t tell us how to do it, they will just say ‘this is a stretch of river what we need doing, and can you please do that and report back’.”
He said: “If there is a body in the river, our sonar will detect it.”
SGI carries out all the underwater search operations across the whole of the South East for the police, Mr Faulding said.
He said his sonar will probably start from the weir downwards “and identify any possible targets”. It can generally cover about 10 miles of river a day, he added.
Mr Faulding also cautioned: “Sometimes you can get deep pools of water where the sonar can’t quite get to and that’s where you have to put the diver in, but this river winds around and there’s deep pools, there’s shallow bits, so it’s a lot of work.”
“We will work a long day and continue until we’re finished,” he explained.
How did SGI get involved?
Mr Faulding said that SGI originally offered its services on Facebook.
“We just said we will assist if required, but they [the family] came straight back and then they went to the police and the police, via that, contacted us.
“And so we’ve had very productive conversations. We work with the police all the time.”
Ms Bulley’s friend Emma White said SGI’s work will “give us answers” but hoped “they uncover nothing”.
She told BBC Breakfast: “Following the hypothesis of the police that Nicola was in the river, we need some evidence to back that up either way and I feel Peter and his amazing bit of kit … is going to come and sweep the river bed and give us answers.”
Speaking to ITV’s Good Morning Britain, Ms White added: “We hope they uncover nothing, like the police have done for the last 10 days, and we hope Nicola is not in that river.”
Ms White, who has known the mother-of-two for 10 years, also told Radio 4’s Today programme how she “came across one of the interviews” with Mr Faulding.
She added: “They’ve got expertise, equipment and manpower and they search rivers in extreme detail, so the quest to bring Peter to St Michael’s began.”
