16 Feb Second river search needed to find missing Nicola, says search leader
A SECOND search for missing mother Nicola Bulley is needed due to new information released by police, according to the forensic search and rescue specialist called in by the family.
Peter Faulding, chief executive of Specialist Group International, suggested she could be further down the river if she had intended to take her own life due to issues with alcohol.
He told GB News: “I feel so sorry for the family that these issues have been released in this way – it should never have come out.
“They could have just told us on the quiet, the press wouldn’t have known, and it would have changed everything.
“The police are getting beaten up here. This is terrible because it’s not the police. It’s just a comms issue.
“And, whoever’s made these decisions needs to answer lots of questions.
“That’s not not the police, that’s not the family. Let’s regroup, get together and then redo this search again so we actually get to try and get some closure for this poor family.”
In an interview with Isabel Webster and Martin Daubney during Breakfast on GB News, he added: “Lets not mock the police.
“I have not been paid for these interviews. I’m on holiday in Cornwall at the moment and I’m just trying to voice my concerns for the family so we can re-group and get this damn thing sorted out properly.”
Asked about the information released about Nicola’s issue with alcohol, he said: “Well, I feel sorry for the family and also I feel sorry for all the hard work the police officers who are working behind the scenes and search teams have done but they’ve been let down by the communications.
“The police have been brilliant. They have been without a doubt. I am disappointed that the police search advisor did not give me that information.
“It’s probably come from a higher level I’d imagine…probably the sergeant on the ground was told not to give me that information.
“We would not have told that to the press because I work on complex murders and I never give information like this.”
He added: “I’ve become this sort of spokesman for the family and this whole case good no one is given any information out I’m not enjoying doing this.
“I’m getting criticised for it but the family have got no voice because all their comms were told to go through the police and not talk to anybody unless they go through the police.”
Mr Faulding said: “I work on these cases all the time with the police and the first thing to say if she is high risk, we change our search strategy.
“I was told they believed she’d fallen in the river at that particular place and that’s why we conducted the search the way we did.
“At the bottom of the bank, if Nicola slipped in, it was only two feet deep on the day, on to rocks you would not have drowned, so that’s what I’ve been saying all along.
“This is a mystery to me this particular job. Nicola could have wandered along the footpath, there’s no CCTV going out to the road, she would not have been seen.”
He added: “If somebody intends to take their own life, and I deal with a number of suicides each year for the police, they tend to jump in and they may swim and float down a while before they manage to drown themselves.
“It’s very grim and we look for things like whiskey bottles, because most people have a drop of whiskey, they have some pills, and they go with it and they tend to drift down.
“That’s the possibility then she could have been taken over the weir, but normally when they drown they go straight to the bottom and that’s why we focused our search into specific areas.”
