Nicola Bulley: Close friend of missing mum thanks search teams for working tirelessly to find her

Jill Peck thanked the police, the local community and Specialist Group International which is using sonar technology to search the River Wyre.

Ms Peck also issued a call for people to come forward with dashcam video of a section of road that has not yet been covered.

She told GB News: “There are no words really. It's one of the situations throughout life you don't want to have to live through.

“We are so grateful to the SGI team. And obviously, the police who are working closely with them and the community and just working tirelessly really to try and find out what's happened to Nikki.

“It's an emotional roller coaster. As a family and as friends, we’re keeping hope. We're trying our best to stay positive.”

She added: “We want to bring Nikki home, her two little girls need her. They're desperate for her to come back, to call.

“It’s just – we just need some answers. We need factual facts. We need evidence.”

Police say it is still a “possibility” she left the area by one path not covered by cameras which is crossed by the main road through the village, and officers are now trying to trace dashcam footage from 700 drivers who passed along the road at the time she disappeared, around 9.20am on January 27.

Ms Peck said: “Anyone that's out there that feels they may have dash-cam footage, there's a section of road that we're missing – Garstang Road towards St Michael’s.

“We just need some answers.”

Nicola Bulley, from Inskip, was last seen on a towpath by the River Wyre off Garstang Road at around 9.15am on Friday (January 27).

An extensive police search was launched following the 45-year-old's disappearance, but no trace of her has been found.

Police have rejected suggestions that missing mother-of-two Nicola Bulley could have been a victim of crime.

Supt Sally Riley, of Lancashire Police, said “every single” potential suspicion or criminal suggestion that had come in, had been looked at by detectives and discounted.

She said, “I would like to reassure the community that nothing in this investigation so far, it has been checked out if it has come in suggesting crime, it has been checked and discounted.

“So every single potential third party line of inquiry and potential suspicious or criminal element has been looked at and discounted.

“It does remain our belief that Nicola sadly fell into the river and that this is a missing persons inquiry.”

Ms Riley described the search for Ms Bulley as “unprecedented”, with a team of 40 detectives investigating 500 different lines of inquiry and police receiving “thousands” of pieces of information.

And while keeping an “open mind” so far, nothing of note had been found to counter their belief Ms Bulley had gone into the water.

The officer asked people, particularly online, not to speculate as to what might have happened as this is “particularly hurtful” to her partner, engineer Paul Ansell, her daughters – aged six and nine – and wider family and friends.

She also warned the public not to break into empty or derelict property along the river by trying to help with the search.

Anybody who has seen Nicola, or has information about where she might be, is asked to call 101, quoting log 565 of January 30.

For immediate sightings call 999.