Divers have returned to the river where Nicola Bulley drowned, it was revealed today.
Specialists were filmed in the River Wyre in Lancashire less than a mile from the bank where the mother-of-two was last seen on January 27, sparking a huge 23-day manhunt.
Ms Bulley’s partner Paul Ansell, 44, raised the alarm after a villager found their spaniel running loose close to a bench overlooking the river. Her mobile phone had been left on the bench.
Dr James Adeley, Senior Coroner for Lancashire, has asked Lancashire Police to return to the water for investigative work to help confirm her cause of death and what happened before she was found in the reeds on February 20.
Footage from the scene shows divers working in the Wyre near its weir on Tuesday, April 4.
A spokesman for HM Coroner said: ‘The investigation will take time to complete to ensure that as complete a picture as possible of the facts concerning Ms Bulley’s death is presented at the inquest. This will assist the family in understanding what occurred.’
Divers are back in the river where Nicola Bulley was found dead in February – 23 days after she vanished
The coroner has ordered Lancashire Police to return to help with Nicola’s upcoming inquest, which will determine her cause of death
Nicola Bulley, pictured with her partner Paul Ansell, disappeared while walking her dog on January 27. She was found dead 23 days later
Footage of the divers shows the police activity on Tuesday, April 4.
The divers can be seen wading through the water next to the weir close to where the 45-year-old’s phone and her dog Willow were found on the morning she disappeared.
The divers climbed over the weir and had been ‘floating on his back’ in the water.
They were then filmed wading through the water at different depths.
Ms Bulley’s body was found a mile downstream from the weir on February 19, among reeds and undergrowth, but a cause of death has not been made public.
An inquest into her death is to be heard on Monday, June 26 at County Hall in Preston.
Lancashire Police confirmed the divers returned to the River Wyre as part of the investigation into Nicola Bulley’s death.
“We can confirm this is us carrying out some work at the direction of HM Coroner,” a police spokesman told the Lancashire Post.
Lancashire Police faces several probes over its handling of the case.
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The force was widely criticised for disclosing Ms Bulley’s struggles with alcohol and the perimenopause two weeks into the search after she vanished by the riverside near St Michael’s on Wyre.
Lancashire Constabulary also failed to address why it took 23 days for Ms Bulley’s body to be found, as well as its handling of social media sleuths who filmed themselves in back gardens searching for the 45-year-old mortgage adviser.
Her body was discovered by psychic Jason Rothwell. An inquest into her death was opened and adjourned in later February. Coroner Dr James Adeley told the four-minute hearing at Preston Coroner’s Court that Ms Bulley was identified by dental records.
He added the remainder of the evidence ‘will require further evaluation’ and no cause of death was given. The inquest is due to resume this summer.
The Independent Office for Police Conduct has already begun investigating Ms Bulley’s prior contact with police. An officer carried out a welfare check at her home 17 days before she went missing.
And the Information Commissioner’s Office – which focuses on data privacy – has made initial inquiries with the force to understand the reasons for disclosing Ms Bulley’s personal information at a press conference.
Mother of two Nicola Bulley (pictured) was discovered in the River Wyre in Lancashire, more than three weeks after she disappeared
Police had twice searched the area where Nicola was found before a member of the public discovered her body in the reeds
Police had searched at least twice the stretch of river where Nicola was found.
Professional teams had been scouring the length of the River Wyre ever since the mother of two disappeared.
Yet it was a man and a woman going for a simple Sunday stroll that sparked a huge police operation that has left Ms Bulley’s family heartbroken.
The pair spotted something in an outcrop of trees and undergrowth along the bank and called emergency services at 11.36am.
With the whole area on high alert, two police officers sped to the scene. A witness saw the man pointing toward the reeds and telling an officer: ‘It was a body. It is down there. It was a body of a woman. There is definitely a body down there.’
The walker made his way down toward the spot by the bank as one of the policemen launched a drone to take a closer look. Within minutes a force helicopter was on the scene, the noise of its rotors echoing across the surrounding fields and alerting the media. Police patrol vehicles were quick to follow.
Officers aggressively cleared the area as a huge cordon was set up, a sign of the pressure cooker Lancashire Constabulary has found itself in.
After police vans and officers on foot had secured a radius of half a mile around the scene, divers arrived, entering the water shortly before 2pm just as Detective Superintendent Rebecca Smith, the senior investigating officer, arrived.
Word of the police activity quickly made its way around St Michael’s on Wyre.
And within half-an-hour a 104-word statement released from police headquarters near Preston detailed how the divers had ‘entered the water and sadly recovered a body’.
