Missing mum Nicola Bulley's partner was a picture of despair and frustration as he visited the area she was last seen almost two weeks ago.
The Mirror reports that Paul Ansell was witnessed holding his head in his hands as he stood at the edge of the River Wyre, after being told that a latest scour of the waterway had come to naught. Mr Ansell was seen with expert dive specialise Paul Faulding at the riverside in St Michael's on Wyre, Lancashire.
Wearing a black puffer jacket, Paul - who met Nicola in a pub 12 years ago - observed the river alongside the expert. Mr Faulding has been conducting searches of the river and has concluded that it is unlikely that the 45-year-old mortgage advisor fell into the water.
Nicola has not been seen since January 27. Mr Faulding, who has dealt with similar missing person hunts, believes he would have found a sign of the mother in the river by now if she had fallen in.
He told LBC's Nick Ferrari: ""I don't think she fell in the water. That's just my opinion with all the drownings I've dealt with over the years.
"They normally go down and the police dive team are brilliant, they know what they're doing, professional, they would have found her, as we would've done. We locate people quickly.
"That's what I'm shocked with, that she's disappeared." The dive boss added that Mr Ansell was "clearly upset".
"He was stunned, really. He just wants to know where his partner is. He's an upset man," he added.
"The family just wanted to come up and talk to me and see progress and how we'd done and Paul wanted to go up to the bench again to see the area. I walked up with Paul and explained to him this is where we've searched and I told Paul that we'd cleared from the weir up to about another mile up river, a long way up the river."
Mr Faulding, who runs search group Specialist Group International, arrived to much media fanfare as he carried out a sonar sweep this week. But he pulled out with his firm yesterday, having failed to produce anything in relation to the missing dog walker.
Nicola's phone was found on a bench by the waterside and had recently connected to a work call. Her dog Willow was found running loose.
Police launched an extensive search of the area and said their "main working hypothesis" was that she fell in a river but no evidence has been found to date to prove this theory. The mum had dropped her two daughters, aged six and nine, off at school and then gone on her usual dog walk alongside the river before she disappeared.
Mr Faulding told TalkTV yesterday: "After 25 years of doing this kind of work, after hundreds of cases, I am well and truly baffled. Normally you would expect the divers to find them easily.
"The police have nothing to go on. All they have is a mobile phone at the moment and they said it could possibly be a decoy."
Mr Faulding's continued comments on the case drew flak from Lancashire Constabulary, with the force seeking to make clear that the diver had not been party to all the details of their wider investigation.
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