Nicola Bulley diver furiously hits back at critics and says ‘I will not be the fall guy’

UNDERWATER search expert Peter Faulding furiously hit back at critics yesterday – and vowed: “I will not be the fall guy.”

Mr Faulding, 60, deployed a sonar scanner to the River Wyre after being drafted in by missing Nicola Bulley’s distraught family.

At the time he confidently predicted: “If Nicola is in there, we will find her. If she’s there, our sonar will pick her up straight away.

“We always locate within the hour. It’s that quick, it’s that good.”

But he called off the search three days later without finding Nicola and concluded: “She’s not in there.”

The discovery of Nicola’s body a mile downstream by dog walkers on Sunday raised serious questions over the search.

Mr Faulding defended his involvement and told The Sun he was tasked with searching the water – not the reeds where Nicola was found.

He said: “I don’t see why the police aren’t getting any stick?

“I don’t want to take the hammering, it’s totally unfair.

“Our remit was to search the bottom of the river, not the reeds. The police also had a sonar scanner of their own.

“They were going up and down the river for three weeks and they found no trace of Nicola.

“Not only that, the police had officers walk along the riverbank every day and still they didn’t find her.

“She could have been there all along. We definitely wouldn’t have found her because we were only tasked with searching the water, not the reeds.

“I’m not going to be the fall guy for this.

“My intentions were good from day one. I did it for nothing and I didn’t need the publicity.

“I don’t want to beat the cops up, but there were a lot of search officers involved.

“It’s unfair for me to be the fall guy. I’m one man, the police are a massive organisation with huge resources.”

, a reservist in the Parachute Regiment for six years, said his team searched the stretch of river where Nicola was found for four hours on the first day.

They went further upstream, beyond the weir, on the subsequent two days of their search but still found nothing.

He went on: “The police underwater search teams and land search teams were searching for three full weeks and were also unable to find Nicola.

“A riverbank and wade search would be the only way to search this area and we were not involved or tasked with that search.

“My previous comments saying that if Nicola was in the river, I would find her, still stand.”