Nicola Bulley: diving expert Peter Faulding claims he's been made the 'fall guy' as he hits out at 'trolls'

A diving expert who assisted in the search for Nicola Bulley has defended himself after police confirmed a body has been found, claiming that he'd been made the "fall guy" in the case.

Underwater search expert Peter Faulding has made further appearances on TV news today (20 February), in which he defended the work of his Specialist Group International (SGI) and re-stated his belief that the mum-of-two did not drown in the stretch of river where her phone was found.

The discovery of a body was made in the River Wyre on Sunday (19 February) over three weeks after the 45-year-old mum-of-two went missing. The mortgage adviser vanished in St Michael’s on Wyre while walking her dog after dropping her daughters, aged six and nine, at school on 27 January.

A Lancashire Police spokesman said officers were called to reports of a body in the river close to Rawcliffe Road at around 11.35am on Sunday.

A statement said: “An underwater search team and specialist officers have subsequently attended the scene, entered the water and have sadly recovered a body. No formal identification has yet been carried out, so we are unable to say whether this is Nicola Bulley at this time.

“Procedures to identify the body are ongoing. We are currently treating the death as unexplained. Nicola’s family have been informed of developments and our thoughts are with them at this most difficult of times. We ask that their privacy is respected.”

What has Peter Faulding said?

Following the confirmation that a body had been found, Peter Faulding said: “Our thoughts are with Nicola’s family and friends at this difficult time.” He had been enlisted by the family and friends of Nicola to search the river for her.

During his search, Faulding and his team, from rescue operation SGI, searched the area around the bench, the “entry point” where it is believed by police Nicola fell into the water. But their three day search ended after a “thorough and extensive search of the areas we were tasked with by Lancashire Police” found “no sign of Nicola”.

He found no trace of her in the section of river searched by his team and police divers over three days.

On Sunday, Mr Faulding said he had only cleared the area around the bench where her mobile phone was found, and that the tidal section beyond the weir was “an open book”, according to MailOnline.

“All I can say is when we searched she was not on the bottom of that river,” he said. “We weren’t searching the reeds, our job was to search the water.”

He said: “Our involvement is we’ve searched it extremely thoroughly and we’ve ruled out, especially, the area where Nicola supposedly went in all the way down to the first weir and then onward down the river quite a distance. And then that’s my area cleared then, and we went upstream as well for about a mile upstream just in case, so it’s been extremely thorough.

“My team have worked long hours on this to get this done and we have done it free of charge to help this family.”

On Monday (20 February), appearing in a discussion with Isabel Webster and Eamonn Holmes on GB News, Mr Faulding said “there's always a fall guy and it looks like it's me, but I'm not accepting it” before hitting out at ‘trolls’ on social media.

He said: “I would like to make it very clear that the police have searched that area with sonar and divers for the last three weeks. We spent four hours searching for Nicola on that strip of the river.

“I categorically confirm that Nicola was not on the river bed, we would have seen her body. If it was Nicola, and I hope it's not or whoever it is, the body was found in the reeds not on the river bed and I was clear with the media that our sonar does not search in the reeds.

“They all know that and the police know that there was no sign of Nicola on the bottom. If Nicola had fallen in at the bench where the phone was found, she would have landed in two feet of water, she would not have drowned at that location.

“I don't believe Nicola went in because the police divers searched that area thoroughly that afternoon and drowning victims go to the bottom, she could not have made it over the weir in a day.

“There's no way and my whole team and other police police have looked at this. It baffled me and I am the one on here today defending my good work to try and help all the families that we do free of charge.

“I want to say again, the police have searched that area along the banks for three weeks thoroughly with divers, using side-scan sonar, and us - and you know there's always a fall guy and it looks like it's me, but I'm not accepting it.

“We've got the sonar imagery of the river bed…we did the best with our ability, but it was not our remit to search the reeds at all. That was the land search teams.”

He added: “My thoughts go out to the family. I’ve remained in close contact with the family. The trolls out there, we need to get a grip of these people. These are just the vile comments against the family, the police, myself - it's no one's fault.

“It's a very hard job dealing with drownings and missing people. It's not easy. We have to take our hats off to everyone who actually got involved with this search. And it's the trolls who need to be exposed, I'm afraid.”