A friend of Nicola Bulley has revealed how police are trying to access a device which the mum had been wearing when she vanished. The 45-year-old disappeared on the morning of January 27, after dropping her children off at school in St Michael's on Wyre, Lancashire.
Lancashire Police has previously described Nicola as wearing a pale blue Fitbit smartwatch on the day she went missing. Nicola's friend Emma White has told The Sun that police have been trying to get hold of data from Nicola's Fitbit device which could help with the search.
“The Fitbit had not been synced since Tuesday,” she said. “The police are trying other ways to try to get information from it.”
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Ms White has also cast doubt on the police theory that Nicola fell into the River Wyre while trying to retrieve a tennis ball for her dog, echoing comments made by her sister on social media. Nicola was last seen with her dog Willow along a towpath in St Michael's.
But Ms White insists Willow would 'pester' on walks with a tennis ball, and her friend had stopped taking it out with them. She told Sky News: "Willow used to love a tennis ball very much but it used to disturb their walks so they haven’t had a tennis ball since way into last year.
"Obviously she loved the tennis ball so she’d always be by you, pestering you for the ball - but it wasn’t a nice walk when the dog’s pestering, so there was definitely no ball." Ms White also insisted that the theory was based on 'limited information' as she vowed to keep up the effort to find her friend.
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.
“We still have no evidence, and that’s why we’re out together in force. You don’t base life on a hypothesis.”
The search for Nicola has today (February 5) entered its 10th day. A key witness who was seen pushing a pram in St Michael's came forward late on Saturday, following a CCTV appeal.
Officers are continuing to appeal for dashcam footage from the area on the morning of January 27. Anyone with information or footage is asked to call 101, quoting log 565 of January 30, or call 999 immediately for sightings of Nicola.
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