Police investigating the disappearance of missing dog walker Nicola Bulley have said she has "specific vulnerabilities" that make her "high risk". Lancashire Police have said they have been "inundated" following the mum's disappearance while walking along the River Wyre in St Michael's on Wyre on the morning of January 27.
Detective Superintendent Rebecca Smith has told how Nicola was ranked as "high risk" due to her "vulnerabilities" that was disclosed by her partner Paul Ansell. The force refused to go into the vulnerabilities out of respect for Nicola's family and the "unimaginable pain and distress" they are going through.
During the briefing, she added: "Those vulnerabilities based our decision-making in terms of grading Nicola as high risk". The Mirror reports that 40 detectives have combed through 1,500 pieces of evidence looking for clues.
Officers have also visited 300 premises and spoken to over 300 people in the hunt for the missing mum. Despite 50 different dashcam videos being passed to police, none showed Nicola after dropping the kids at school or walking her dog Willow.
Investigators did reveal that she bumped into a number of other dog walkers and took a work call where she had her camera turned off and her microphone muted. In detail released today by the police, they were able to say that around 9.20am, Nicola's phone was moved to the bench where it was eventually found.
It is unclear what happened within the next 13 minutes as her phone was found by cops at 9.33 am. Authorities first deployed drones at 12.18 pm before an air unit joined the hunt an hour later.
Lancashire Fire and Rescue were using thermal imaging, as underwater drones and land searches were also deployed by 1.14pm and partner services had also been brought in by 2.30pm - a matter of hours from when she vanished.
Senior police officers have said that armchair detectives and wild speculation online is getting in the way of their investigation. They highlighted two myths that wanna-be detectives had spouted countless theories about online, a derelict house and a red van, and ran through how police had investigated both fully and thoroughly.
Detective Superintendent Smith also said that in her 29 years on the police force she had never seen anything like it. The main working hypothesis remained that Nicola fell into the river, and she also stressed that there was still "no evidence" of a "criminal aspect of third party involvement".
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