What could have happened to Nicola Bulley? Specialized divers began Monday to look for the trace of this Briton who has been missing since January 27 in the English countryside. She had left that day to walk her dog after dropping her children off at school.
The disappearance of this 45-year-old woman has been making headlines in British newspapers for several days, and the police’s insistence on favoring the thesis of an accident has raised many questions. “An hour later, she disappeared”, headlined Monday the Daily Mirrorshowing the last known image of this woman, taken from a video surveillance camera which shows her getting her dog into her car.
His cell phone found
Lancashire Police say Nicola Bulley disappeared within “a ten-minute window” in the countryside near the village of St Michael’s on Wyre in north-west England. She had just dropped her daughters off at school. At 9:01 a.m., this mortgage advisor took part in a business call on Teams. This remote meeting ended at 9:30 a.m., but his phone remained connected to the call.
A walker saw Nicola Bulley at 9:10 a.m. As of 9:20 a.m., his phone was located, according to the police investigation, on the bench, where he was found around 9:35 a.m. by another walker, no away from the dog, left alone and “agitated”.
Fallen into a river?
“Our main working hypothesis is that Nicola sadly fell into the river and there was no third party or criminal involvement, and that this is not suspicious, but a tragic case of a missing person” , said Friday Sally Riley, who is leading the police investigation.
But Nicola Bulley’s family and friends refuse to believe this theory. They highlighted the absence of footprints in the wet earth. “Someone must know something. People do not vanish like that, ”reacted his sister Louise Cunningham, while his father mentioned the trail of a kidnapping.
Police searched the river but found no trace of Nicola Bulley. On Monday, a team of specialist divers from Specialist Group International joined the search. The high-tech sonar used by this company can spot “a piece of wood or a stone resting in a river”, said its director Peter Faulding.