A forensic expert has urged Lancashire Police to carry out another search of the river near Nicola Bulley’s last known location.
The 45-year-old mum of two went missing on January 27 and the search has entered its third week.
Nicola was last seen walking her brown spaniel Willow near the River Wyre in St Michaels on Wyre, Lancashire.
Police believe Bulley may have “have fallen into the river for some reason”.
They have maintained that her disappearance was not being treated as suspicious.
Chief executive of Specialist Group International, Peter Faulding, said that another search of the river was needed in light of new information.
Yesterday, Lancashire Police revealed that Nicola suffered “significant issues with alcohol” in the past which had resurfaced as a result of ongoing struggles with the menopause.
The River Wyre in St Michael's on Wyre, Lancashire, as police continue their search for Nicola Bulley.
Peter Powell
She was classed by police as a “high-risk” missing person and deemed “vulnerable”.
Faulding, who has been assisting the police in their search for Nicola, said he would have altered his approach the the search if he knew the newly released information.
He joined GB News’ Isabel Webster and Martin Daubney on Breakfast and said if he had known Nicola was classed as “high risk” he would have searched further down the river.
He explained: “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.”
He continued: “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.
Police said that Nicola was classed as vulnerable and high risk.
PA
“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.”
Elsewhere, Faulding addressed criticism of the police and their decision to release the sensitive information.
“I feel so sorry for the family that these issues have been released in this way - it should never have come out,” he said.
“They could have just told us on the quiet, the press wouldn't have known, and it would have changed everything."
