Dive specialist says knowing Nicola Bulley was ‘high risk’ would have ‘changed our whole search’

Published

2 years ago

February 16, 2023

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The dive specialist who has been helping police in the hunt for Nicola Bulley says knowing the missing mum was “high risk” would have “changed our whole search”.

Peter Faulding, chief executive of search team Specialist Group International, told Sky News police in Lancashire never made him aware that Ms Bulley had issues with her mental health.

Asked if having that information would have impacted his search, he said: “It would certainly change my search because, from day one, I’ve said this case is so baffling because water at the bottom of the bank at the point where Nicola’s phone and the dog’s harness were found was only two feet deep.

“If she’d have fallen in she would have landed on rocks, she would not have drowned. That’s what has baffled me.”

Mr Faulding said he remained in contact with Paul Ansell, Ms Bulley’s partner, and her family – who released a statement today calling for “wild theories” about her personal life to stop.

He added: “We thoroughly searched that piece of river as we have been tasked by the police.

“If somebody tries to drown themselves or if they are in a strange state of mind they might just wander off somewhere. She might be lying in a ditch, she could have wandered into the woods.

“So that’s the point with a vulnerable person, you don’t know where they’re going to go. It would have changed our whole search.”

Explaining further, he added: “If she had slipped, even if she had gone into deep water she would have been found.

“She would have gone in roughly where she drowned. That is what we find on average with the drownings and suicides we deal with each year – they’re normally found within a couple of metres of where they go down.

“If she was trying to drown herself she may have drifted and potentially gone over the weir, but the police divers searched that area very thoroughly on the day she went missing and there was no sign of her. And that’s why I said this was a baffling case.”

‘A very cruel thing to do’

Asked what he thought about the police releasing personal information about Ms Bulley’s mental state, he said he’d never before seen such information disclosed.

Mr Faulding said that even as a person involved in the search he would normally just be told the individual was “high risk” and not be told specifics of what troubles the missing person was struggling with.

He added: “Normally when you’re searching for a high risk person you just get the information that they’re high risk and that’s it. That’s enough to tell us that someone may harm themselves or come to some harm.

“That’s as a searcher.

“The way it has been released to the media should not have been done. I’ve been getting calls from senior police officers asking what is going on.”

He added that, in his view, the family would be “devastated” that information about the missing mum’s struggles with alcohol had been made public, calling it “a very cruel thing to do”.

However, in a statement released through the police on Thursday, Ms Bulley’s family said they were aware of the police’s plans to release her personal information.

They said the police “know the truth about Nikki”.

Reputation ‘destroyed’ by police revelations

Speaking before the family released the statement, former detective Martyn Underhill said that Lancashire Police have “completely destroyed” Ms Bulley’s reputation by revealing her struggles with alcohol.

He told Sky News that he had never “seen such a level of detail” released in a missing persons case and added that one had to ask why officers were releasing it now.

Speaking to Sky’s Kay Burley, Mr Underhill, who was a detective involved in the Sarah Payne case in 2000, said he was “confused” by Lancashire Police’s strategy.

“You can understand why some people are saying it’s victim blaming to protect their own reputation, ” he said.

“I can’t see how it progresses the case any further forward now we’re three weeks in, to be frank.”

Having apparently found no trace of the mother-of-two for more than 20 days, police yesterday revealed that they had classified Ms Bulley as “high risk” owing to “a number of specific vulnerabilities”.

After initially refusing to elaborate on what those vulnerabilities were at a press conference, Lancashire Police subsequently released a statement saying: “Nicola had in the past suffered with some significant issues with alcohol which were brought on by her ongoing struggles with the menopause and that these struggles had resurfaced over recent months.”

“This caused some real challenges for Paul and the family,” it added in a reference to Ms Bulley’s partner, Paul Ansell.

‘Unprecedented’ search fails to solve baffling case

Detectives also revealed that they had been at Ms Bulley’s house the week before she disappeared to check her welfare.

Ms Bulley has been missing since 27 January after vanishing when she took her dog Willow for a walk by the River Wyre in Lancashire.

She was last seen at 9.10am that day, after taking her usual route with her springer spaniel, alongside the river.

Her phone, still connected to a work call for her job as a mortgage adviser, was found just over 20 minutes later on a bench overlooking the riverbank, with her dog running loose.

Since she vanished, huge public and media interest has resulted in what police described as “false information, accusations and rumours”.

Police insist an “unprecedented” search – of both the River Wyre, downstream to Morecambe Bay and miles of neighbouring farmland – has taken place to find her.

UK

Diogo Jota: Liverpool players join mourners as Premier League star and his brother Andre Silva buried in Portugal

Published

8 hours ago

July 5, 2025

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Diogo Jota: Liverpool players join mourners as Premier League star and his brother Andre Silva buried in Portugal

Liverpool players past and present have joined the family and friends of Diogo Jota and his brother Andre Silva for their funeral in Portugal.

A service was held in the Igreja Matriz de Gondomar church in their hometown of Gondomar near Porto in northern Portugal on Saturday morning.

Mourners lined the streets and some in the crowd clapped as the brothers’ coffins were carried into the church.

The funeral – in pictures

Jota, 28, leaves behind his wife of only 11 days, Rute Cardoso, and three young children.

His younger brother, 25, was an attacking midfielder for Penafiel in the second tier of Portuguese football.

Liverpool manager Arne Slot, captain Virgil Van Dijk and teammates including Andy Robertson, Conor Bradley, Ryan Gravenberch, Cody Gakpo, Curtis Jones, Darwin Nunez and Joe Gomez were seen at the service.

Former teammates Jordan Henderson, James Milner and Fabinho were also there.

Van Dijk carried a red wreath with Jota’s number 20, while Robertson had a wreath featuring number 30, Silva’s number at Penafiel.

Some of Jota’s teammates in the Portuguese national side also attended, including Bruno Fernandes, of Manchester United, Ruben Dias and Bernardo Silva, of Manchester City, Joao Felix and Renato Veiga, of Chelsea, Nelson Semedo, from Wolves, Joao Moutinho and Rui Patricio.

Ruben Neves was one of the pallbearers after flying in from Florida where he played for Al Hilal in the Club World Cup quarter-final on Friday night.

‘More than a friend’

In a post published on Instagram before the service, he told Jota he had been “more than a friend, we’re family, and we won’t stop being that way just because you’ve decided to sign a contract a little further away from us!”

Jota’s fellow Liverpool midfielder, Alexis Mac Allister, said on Instagram: “I can’t believe it. I’ll always remember your smiles, your anger, your intelligence, your camaraderie, and everything that made you a person. It hurts so much; we’ll miss you. Rest in peace, dear Diogo.”

Porto FC president Andre Villas-Boas and Portugal national team manager Roberto Martinez were also in attendance.

‘With us forever’

Speaking after the ceremony, Martinez said the period since their deaths had been “really, really sad days, as you can imagine, but today we showed we are a large, close family.

“Their spirit will be with us forever.”

The service was private, but the words spoken by the Bishop of Porto, Manuel Linda, were broadcast to those standing outside the church.

He told Jota’s children, who were not at the service, that he was praying for them specifically, as well as their mother and grandparents.

“There are no words, but there are feelings,” he said, adding: “We also suffer a lot and we are with you emotionally.”

The brothers died after a Lamborghini they were travelling in burst into flames following a suspected tyre blowout in the early hours of Thursday morning.

No other vehicles are said to have been involved in the incident.

Liverpool have delayed the return of their players for pre-season following Jota’s death and players past and present paid tribute to him and his brother on social media.

Flowers have been left outside Anfield, where flags have been lowered to half-mast and all club shops, museums and tours have been closed until Monday.

UK

Rachel Reeves hints at tax rises in autumn budget after welfare bill U-turn

Published

11 hours ago

July 5, 2025

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Rachel Reeves hints at tax rises in autumn budget after welfare bill U-turn

Rachel Reeves has hinted that taxes are likely to be raised this autumn after a major U-turn on the government’s controversial welfare bill.

Sir Keir Starmer’s Universal Credit and Personal Independent Payment Bill passed through the House of Commons on Tuesday after multiple concessions and threats of a major rebellion.

MPs ended up voting for only one part of the plan: a cut to universal credit (UC) sickness benefits for new claimants from £97 a week to £50 from 2026/7.

Initially aimed at saving £5.5bn, it now leaves the government with an estimated £5.5bn black hole – close to breaching Ms Reeves’s fiscal rules set out last year.

In an interview with The Guardian, the chancellor did not rule out tax rises later in the year, saying there were “costs” to watering down the welfare bill.

“I’m not going to [rule out tax rises], because it would be irresponsible for a chancellor to do that,” Ms Reeves told the outlet.

“We took the decisions last year to draw a line under unfunded commitments and economic mismanagement.

“So we’ll never have to do something like that again. But there are costs to what happened.”

Meanwhile, The Times reported that, ahead of the Commons vote on the welfare bill, Ms Reeves told cabinet ministers the decision to offer concessions would mean taxes would have to be raised.

The outlet reported that the chancellor said the tax rises would be smaller than those announced in the 2024 budget, but that she is expected to have to raise tens of billions more.

It comes after Ms Reeves said she was “totally” up to continuing as chancellor after appearing tearful at Prime Minister’s Questions.

Criticising Sir Keir for the U-turns on benefit reform during PMQs, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said the chancellor looked “absolutely miserable”, and questioned whether she would remain in post until the next election.

Sir Keir did not explicitly say that she would, and Ms Badenoch interjected to say: “How awful for the chancellor that he couldn’t confirm that she would stay in place.”

In her first comments after the incident, Ms Reeves said she was having a “tough day” before adding: “People saw I was upset, but that was yesterday.

“Today’s a new day and I’m just cracking on with the job.”

Sir Keir also told Sky News’ political editor Beth Rigby on Thursday that he “didn’t appreciate” that Ms Reeves was crying in the Commons.

“In PMQs, it is bang, bang, bang,” he said. “That’s what it was yesterday.

“And therefore, I was probably the last to appreciate anything else going on in the chamber, and that’s just a straightforward human explanation, common sense explanation.”

UK

Diogo Jota and Andre Silva’s funeral in pictures

Published

12 hours ago

July 5, 2025

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Diogo Jota and Andre Silva's funeral in pictures

The family and friends of Diogo Jota and his brother Andre Silva have been joined by Liverpool stars past and present and other Portuguese players at the pair’s funeral near Porto.

The Liverpool forward, 28, and his brother died in a car crash in Spain on Thursday.

Pictures below show the funeral at the Igreja Matriz de Gondomar church in the town of Gondomar near Porto. Click here for our liveblog coverage of the day’s events.