The mother of Corrie McKeague, the RAF serviceman who has been missing for three months, has said her son was a “social hand grenade” who would put himself at risk.
Nicola Urquhart has always feared that someone else may have been involved in her 23-year-old son’s disappearance, but police have downplayed the concerns, saying they have found no evidence of foul play.
She participated in a 90-minute question and answer session on Facebook Live on Thursday, which was viewed by more than 39,000 people, during which she spoke about her son’s disappearance and the police investigation.
“He’s not so much a social butterfly, more a social hand grenade who absolutely lives for the moment,” Urquhart said. “He will make choices and decisions that are sometimes reckless that other people might not.
“Would he get into a stranger’s car? Yes. Would he go to a stranger’s house that he’s never met before that he’s met on a social dating site? Yes. He would put himself at risk because Corrie believed he could handle himself.”
McKeague was last seen in the early hours of 24 September after a night out with friends in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk. He was reported missing on the following Monday, 26 September, after he failed to turn up at his base at RAF Honington, 11 miles (18km) away.
Speaking from her home in Dunfermline, Scotland, Urquhart called for a number of people seen in the area on CCTV that night to be identified, including a man walking along Cornhill Walk around the time McKeague was last seen.
She said four vehicles had entered the area where her son was last seen and said she believed one of them did not have a legitimate reason to be there. Urquhart said three men had set fire to a vehicle not far from the site the next day, which she thought was “highly suspicious”.
She said: “[Police] have made some efforts, they have put equipment up to look on top of the buildings, and they’ve also had some aerial footage given to them as well.
“They’ve done some door-to-door, they have had civilians tap on doors with bits of paper asking if they’d been aware of anything happening to Corrie, if they heard anything that night. This did take about seven weeks before the people went round. Unfortunately, if someone has somebody tied up in their house, or they’ve done something to Corrie, I wouldn’t imagine they were about to tell the person standing at their door. So I would like that area forensically searched.”
CCTV footage showed McKeague walking alone and eating fast food in Brentgovel Street at 3.25am the morning he disappeared. Police scoured woodland areas in the vicinity and also searched a bin lorry, believing his phone had been lost or discarded and ended up in rubbish.
In October, detectives said they had received a report of a possible sighting of McKeague near the Hollow Road industrial estate, heading towards RAF Honington. Officers were called by a man who told them he had been driving in the area when he spotted a man in light clothing at the back of a sugar beet factory at about 4.20am.
