Nicola Bulley: First images released of dog walker on day she vanished – as private underwater rescue team joins search
The first images of Nicola Bulley on the day she vanished have been shared by her family, as a private underwater rescue team joins the search for the missing dog walker.
The 45-year-old mortgage adviser was last seen more than a week ago, walking her dog Willow in Lancashire. Police are working on the theory she fell into the River Wyre.
New CCTV pictures, captured by her doorbell camera on Friday 27 January, show Ms Bulley loading her car outside her home before driving her two children to school.
She is seen wearing a long dark coat – believed to be black. Her blonde hair is pulled back in a ponytail.
Ms Bulley was last seen walking her dog a short while later on a footpath near the waterways of St Michael’s on Wyre village.
Police previously confirmed the items of clothing she was wearing included an ankle-length black quilted gilet jacket, a black Engelbert Strauss waist-length coat, tight-fitting black jeans, long green walking socks, ankle-length green Next wellies, a necklace, and a pale blue Fitbit.
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It comes as private diving team SGI has been brought in to assist the police searching the river after offering its services “free of charge”.
After the offer was initially declined by the force, according to SGI’s CEO Peter Faulding, Lancashire Police has now confirmed the specialist team will be deployed.
In a statement, Lancashire Police said SGI “will join an already large, multi-agency search operation involving a wide variety of search assets and resources”.
It added: “Their capability will overlay what has already been, and continues to be done, in order to give extra search coverage along what is an extremely challenging environment to search.”
Nicola Bulley has been missing for more than a week
The crucial 10-minute window
Authorities are focusing on a crucial 10-minute window when Ms Bulley’s movements are unaccounted for between 9.10am and 9.20am.
At 9.01am she logged into a Microsoft Teams call – but her microphone was muted, and her camera was turned off. She was last seen by an acquaintance walking her dog in the upper field at 9.10am.
Ten minutes later, at 9.20am, her phone was left on a bench by the river. The conference call ended at 9.30am but her phone remained logged into the call.
Just three minutes later, at 9.33am, Ms Bulley’s phone was found by another dog walker and Willow discovered running between the bench and a gate to the field.
The dog’s harness was found on the grass between the bench and the river’s edge.
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Retracing Nicola Bulley’s journey
‘Helicopters are looking for mummy’
Ms Bulley’s daughters have been asking where their mother is, a friend has told Sky News.
In a short video shared with Sky News, her daughter Sophia can be heard pointing at a search team saying: “Them helicopters, they’re looking for mummy.”
Speaking to Sky correspondent Katerina Vittozzi, Jill Peck said: “It’s hard for them, they’ve got all the same emotions as everybody else and they want to see their mum, and they don’t know where she is.”
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‘Them helicopters, they’re looking for mummy’
People gathered at St Michael’s Church in Lancashire on Sunday to light candles, with the community in shock. The church is just a few minutes walk from where Ms Bulley dropped off her two children, aged nine and six, on the morning she went missing.
In an attempt to “keep things as normal as possible for the kiddies,” Ms Peck said pre-planned events, like a school disco on Friday night, have gone ahead, with Ms Bulley’s children attending.
“If something was in the diary, it’s been kept in the diary,” Ms Peck said. “They are aware that something is happening but we’re trying to keep it away from the school.”
“They just desperately want her home and that is all they are asking all the time is ‘where is she and is she coming home?'”
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Candles lit for Nicola
Family say ‘no evidence’ she fell into the water
The police’s “main working hypothesis” is that she got into difficulty and fell into the water in that 10-minute window.
But her family and friends have claimed there is “no evidence whatsoever” behind this.
Ms Bulley’s friend, Emma White, told Sky News on Saturday that the “police hypothesis is on limited information”.
She said: “When we are talking about a life we can’t base it on a hypothesis – surely we need this factual evidence.
“That’s what the family and all of us are holding on to – that we are sadly no further on than last Friday.”
Ms White has also dismissed the theory that she may have tried to retrieve a tennis ball from the river while playing with her dog.
“Willow loved using a tennis ball very much, but it used to disturb their walk so they haven’t had a tennis ball since last year”.
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Teams scour the river bank for Nicola’s clothes
Dog walker ‘vanished’ into thin air
Police have speculated that Nicola Bulley had an issue with her dog, Willow
“There was definitely no ball,” she added.
Police have urged the public to look out along the river for the items of clothing that Ms Bulley was last seen wearing.
Footage of the moment 10-year-old Sara Sharif’s alleged killers were detained after police boarded their plane back to the UK has been played in court.
As they are approached by officers, Sara‘s stepmother Beinash Batool is heard saying: “I think you’re looking for us.”
Batool, 30, Sara’s father Urfan Sharif, 42, and uncle Faisal Malik, 29, are accused of carrying out a campaign of abuse against her culminating in her death at her family home in Surrey on 8 August last year.
The defendants, along with five of Sara’s siblings, aged between one and 13, flew to Pakistan the following day.
Sara’s body was found by police in a bunkbed on 10 August after Sharif called police from Pakistan to say he had beaten her “too much” for being “naughty”.
A murder investigation was launched involving agencies including Interpol and the National Crime Agency to locate the defendants.
They returned to the UK on a flight from Dubai to Gatwick Airport on 13 September.
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‘I beat her up too much’
The clips of officers’ body-worn video shown to the jury on Friday captured the moment police boarded the plane and detained the defendants at 7.42pm, seven minutes after touchdown.
After Batool addresses the officers, Sharif, who had been sitting next to her, is asked to follow them.
The three were then taken off the plane and arrested.
Pic: Surrey Police
A post-mortem examination established Sara had sustained extensive and significant injuries over a sustained period prior to her death.
The jury heard on Friday how concerns were raised by Sara’s school about bruising on her body in June 2022 and March 2023.
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Several items seized from Sara’s home were also reviewed by the court, including a leather belt which had full DNA samples at both ends for Sara, Sharif, and Malik.
A cricket bat was also found to have Sara’s DNA profile on it, along with the DNA samples of Sharif and Malik.
Neither item had a DNA trace of Batool.
The court also reviewed the defendants’ bank accounts – both joint and separate.
All three defendants have pleaded not guilty to murder and causing or allowing the death of a child.
The trial continues.
Six teenagers have been arrested after a 13-year-old girl was found with multiple stab wounds on a roadside near Hull.
Police said she was found around 6.50am on the A63 in Hessle with “life-threatening injuries” including “lacerations to her neck, abdomen, chest and back”.
Four boys and two girls – aged between 14 and 17 – were quickly arrested in a nearby wooded area and are being questioned on suspicion of attempted murder.
Members of the public came to the girl’s aid before emergency services arrived, Humberside Police said.
Detective Superintendent Simon Vickers said they “believe the attackers knew the victim” and the circumstances are still being investigated.
“The girl remains in hospital in critical condition and her family are being supported by officers at this difficult time,” he added.
The boys arrested are aged 14, 15, 16 and 17, and the girls 14 and 15.
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Cordons are in place around a wooded area off Ferriby High Road while investigations continue.
Police said they would have an increased presence in the area over the weekend and have asked anyone with information or video to get in touch, or contact Crimestoppers anonymously.
UK
Ex-soldier Daniel Khalife tells court it was a ‘foolish idea’ to have someone with his ‘skillset’ in prison
A former soldier has told a jury his escape from Wandsworth prison to avoid being held with sex offenders and terrorists showed his “skillset”.
Daniel Khalife, 23, who was being held accused of passing secrets to Iran said he was “never a real spy” but planned a fake defection to the state following his arrest after watching American television show Homeland.
He said he wanted to be moved to a high-security unit because he was getting unwanted attention from the sex offenders on the vulnerable prisoners wing and feared a move to Belmarsh prison because, as a British soldier, terrorists wanted to kill him.
Khalife said he first wanted to “make a show” of escaping, acting suspiciously and covering himself in soot from a food delivery lorry on 21 August last year, while he was working in the prison kitchen.
He was spotted and reported to security but was “pretty shocked” when nothing happened so decided to take the “full measure,” he told the jury.
A makeshift sling. Pic: Met Police
Talking about his escape for the first time at his Woolwich Crown Court trial, Khalife told how he fashioned a makeshift sling from kitchen trousers and carabiners used by inmates to keep their possessions safe from rats.
He attached it to the Bidfood lorry on 1 September last year, to see if it would be spotted by officers at Wandsworth or other prisons on the delivery route.
“I put the two carabiners and the makeshift rope underneath the lorry,” he said.
“When I had made the decision to actually leave the prison I was going to do it properly so I tested the security not just in Wandsworth
“Strangely, over the coming days, I could see it but it wasn’t spotted in Wandsworth or any other prison.”
Then on the morning of 6 September, Khalife said he concealed himself underneath the lorry, resting his back on the sling as the lorry was searched.
“They did normal checks around with torches but they didn’t find me. After that, a governor came to the tunnel and said, ‘Have you searched the vehicle?’
“I was facing upwards. There was action around the lorry.”
Daniel Khalife joined the Army aged 16
He said that when the vehicle stopped he “came out underneath the lorry and stayed in the prone position” until the lorry moved off.
Khalife, who joined the Army aged 16 and took up a post with the Royal Signals, based in Beacons barracks, Staffordshire, said he made no attempt to leave the country and had no intention to “run away” from the charges he was facing.
He was arrested three days later on the footpath of the Grand Union Canal in Northolt, west London, after a nationwide manhunt.
Asked why he had not handed himself in after his escape, Khalife said: “I was finally demonstrating what a foolish idea it was to have someone of my skillset in prison. What use was that to anyone?”
“I accept that I left the prison and didn’t have any permission to do so,” he said. “I accept absolutely that I shouldn’t have done what I did.”
Daniel Khalife
Inspired by Homeland
The court has heard Khalife initiated contact with Iranian intelligence officers after he was told he could not pass developed vetting because his mother was born in Iran.
Khalife told MI5 he wanted to be a “double agent” and he said in court he thought he would be “congratulated” but described his arrest as like a “punch in the face”.
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Wearing a blue checked shirt and chinos, he said police were “blinded at the prospect of a successful prosecution” but he did not think being in prison would be in “the public interest”.
“I didn’t do anything that harmed our national security. I wanted to put myself in a position where I could help my country,” he said.
“I believed I could continue my work actually located in the state – the state being Iran.”
Khalife said he took inspiration from watching Homeland, starring Claire Danes and Damian Lewis, in which Americans and terrorists go undercover, on Netflix.
“I had seen one of the characters in the programme had actually falsely defected to a particular country and utilised that position to further the national security interests of that character’s country,” he said.
“The country in question, Iran, thought it was real. She did it to further the interests of her own country.”
Khalife told jurors he is a “patriot”, adding: “I do love my country. All I wanted to do was help. I never wanted to do any harm, I never did do any harm.”
He added: “It is tragic it has come to this and I would do anything to go back to my career.”
Khalife, from Kingston, southwest London, denies a charge of committing an act prejudicial to the safety or interests of the state under the Official Secrets Act between 1 May 2019 and 6 January 2022.
He has also pleaded not guilty to a charge under the Terrorism Act of eliciting information about Armed Forces personnel on 2 August 2021, perpetrating a bomb hoax on or before 2 January 2023 and escaping from prison on 6 September last year.
The trial continues.
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