Two women have told the inquest into the death of Nicola Bulley of hearing a scream near the riverside on the morning she vanished. Nurse Helen O’Neill said she was with her dogs in the garden of her house on Allotment Lane, not far from a path that leads to the bench overlooking the River Wyre where Ms Bulley disappeared.
Ms Bulley, 45, vanished after dropping her daughters, aged six and nine, at school, then taking her usual dog walk along the River Wyre in St Michael’s on Wyre, Lancashire, on January 27. Her body was found in the River Wyre around a mile from the bench, on February 19.
An inquest is today taking place into her death and is expected to last for two days. Ms O’Neill told the inquest: “I heard a scream, it’s not an alarming noise, it was just over in a couple of seconds. I’m quite used to hearing the children in the school out back, but it was not that noise.
“I vividly remember thinking it’s unusual at this time. In my head, I had two females, walking along by the river and one jumped out on the other. I didn’t think anything of it until later on. There were no other sounds for me to be concerned about.”
A second witness, Veronica Claesen, a housewife and club secretary for the village tennis club, said: “I was just about to get into the car and I heard a scream. A very short scream and my immediate thought was, ‘Somebody is having a bit of fun at the back of the graveyard’.”
Ms Claesen said it was an “inhale scream” like a sharp intake of breath. A woman has described the moment she discovered Nicola Bulley’s phone and dog Willow.
Penny Fletcher, who runs a nearby campsite, told the inquest about the moment she found Ms Bulley’s dog: “I saw a springer spaniel loose, it was near the bench and going right towards the river where it drops down very steeply.
“I wouldn’t say it was acting chaotic at all, it was a bit giddy, yes.” Ms Fletcher found the phone, as well as a dog harness, and tied Willow to the bench.
She later found out it was Ms Bulley’s dog and heard that she had gone missing. A mother who bumped into Nicola Bulley on the morning of her disappearance said there was “nothing of concern”.
Kay Kiernan, a receptionist, told the inquest she spoke to Ms Bulley about her dog Willow while dropping off her children at school at just after 8.30am. She said: “She was not happy, but who is on a Friday-morning school run? She wasn’t sad, just how I normally knew her.”
Ms Kiernan went on: “There was nothing of concern.”
Earlier the coroner was told that Nicola may have only been able to hold her breath for “one or two seconds at best” in the river. Cold water expert Dr Patrick Morgan said: “(After falling in) the heart rate goes excessively high, the blood pressure surges excessively high.
“The heart pumps no blood, and the brain switches off. The potential conscious time here quoted are optimistic… it is potentially shorter. On the occasion that the individual has taken that initial gasp on the surface of the water and then gone below, the duration would be 10 seconds that you could hold your breath, and very likely one or two seconds at best.”
Two breaths of water would have been a “lethal dose” for Nicola Bulley, an expert has told her inquest in Preston. Professor Michael Tipton said: “We estimate the temperature would have been around 3 to 5C (in the River Wyre), so there would be a particularly powerful cold-shock response.
“For somebody of Nicola’s size, it would have taken one or two breaths in of water to be a lethal dose.” Nicola died as a result of drowning and was alive when she fell into the water, a Home Office pathologist has said.
Dr Alison Armour, giving evidence at an inquest at County Hall in Preston, said watery fluid and fragments of dirt found inside Ms Bulley’s body were “typical features we see in cases of drowning”.
She added that Ms Bulley was alive when she entered the water and that there was “no evidence” she was harmed.
The inquest continues
