Nicola Bulley ghoul PICTURED with GoPro cam on day tragic mum’s body was found – after barging into official press area
A TIKTOK ghoul barged into the official press area with a GoPro strapped to his chest on the day Nicola Bulley's body was found.
Despite being a barber with no journalism credentials, Curtis Arnold managed to wander through the cordoned off section in St Michael's, Lancashire, to nab content for his social media.
He wore a blue and white Pierre Cardin polo shirt and grey tracksuit bottoms with the camera clipped onto his collar.
On the same day, he duped police and covertly filmed as the mum-of-two was retrieved from the River Wyre - more than three weeks after she disappeared.
The 34-year-old posted grim footage of officers by the water's edge on TikTok and YouTube.
Arnold's sickening eight-minute clip sparked a wave of condemnation - but its near million views have earned him almost £1,000 in royalties.
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He also shared a video of the ashen-faced couple in shock after finding 45-year-old Nicola in reeds on February 19.
He previously recorded a "possible burial site" in woodland near where Nicola was last seen on January 27 and headlined a string of videos with outrageous smears against her partner Paul Ansell.
Arnold claims to offer "media and journalism done differently" but hides his identity online.
He is careful not to appear on camera, and sometimes uses a picture of Paul as his profile image.
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But he was unmasked after being tracked down to his barber shop from his digital footprint and channel rebrand.
The powerlifter made five, six-hour round trips from his Worcestershire home to St Michael's on Wyre in the space of 10 days to acquire content for his online following.
Arnold's most sickening video from the village opens with his GoPro, fastened to a harness around his neck, filming a male police officer blocking his path.
He is asked to turn back but tricks the cop into letting him through by claiming that he needs to return to his parked car and saying that he is from Blackpool.
As dozens of officers gather and a police helicopter and drone hover overhead, Arnold asks a female colleague on the other side of the cordon: "What's going on down there? I've walked down and he wouldn't let me pass."
She also directs him to leave the area but the video then cuts to Arnold filming covertly as officers lift what appears to be a body bag.
Many viewers reacted with horror to his footage headlined "Nicola Bulley *breaking* police found something".
One wrote: "This is disgraceful! Imagine if that was your loved one. I hope her family does not see this."
Another said: "You need your head looking at filming this. Her children will see this one day, you vile man.";
He will do anything for more views to make money.
Arnold's TikTok account focusing on Nicola's case, which had more than 13,000 followers and 100,000 likes, has since been removed but the video remains elsewhere online.
Asked if he was behind the notorious video, he replied "Yes. How did you find me?"
He admitted that he lied to police and crouched in a field to film covertly on his Samsung S21 smartphone.
Arnold recalled: "I held the phone as high above me as I could, resting it on fencing.
"I couldn't see a thing but I knew my camera would be recording whatever was happening."
Arnold, whose ambition is to "make a good living" from YouTube full-time, gleefully revealed the £716.06 in royalties that he made from the platform alone, adding: "It is probably £900 by now but it takes a while to come through."
He is single and lives in a three-bedroom detached house near the barbers, which he has been running for the past two years.
His first viral videos were of "car fishing" - vehicles coming unstuck attempting to drive through deep water - at Rufford Ford near Newark, Nottinghamshire.
Nottinghamshire County Council had to close the river in December at the request of police after the TikTok craze turned the small rural lane into one of the world's most notorious roads.
'DISGRACEFUL'
Someone who knows Arnold well said: "He will do anything for more views to make money.
"He gives all TikTok-ers a bad reputation."
Another of the videos, titled "Nicola Bulley *UNSEEN* ABANDONED HOUSE SEARCH", has been viewed almost 100,000 times on YouTube.
It shows Arnold roaming around a large, supposedly vacant house on the opposite side of the river from the bench where Nicola was last seen and her phone was found.
He has also been criticised for a video he uploaded to another of his channels on February 18 of a "possible burial site".
He filmed a man digging in a copse and it looked like the pair were working in tandem as a search team.
But Arnold said he had simply stumbled across another amateur sleuth, saying: "I never met him before. I just filmed him digging."
Arnold claims that his covert filming triggered death threats and he apologised to Nicola's family for the potential "distress" he may have caused.
But he remains undeterred, saying he intends to follow as many breaking news stories as he can to post about online.
POLICE UNDER FIRE
"It gives the public a chance to get closer to the event and in the Nicola case I wanted people to watch my footage and see if they noticed that me or the police had missed anything," he added.
Experts say that social media algorithms encourage and reward controversial content like Arnold's - though TikTok insists that it removes content and accounts that engage in bullying and harassment or otherwise violates its policies.
There have been 400 million views on TikTok alone of videos with the hashtag "NicolaBulley".
They include over half a million views of 26-year-old "psychic" Lucy Hesford-Buckingham, from Wales, sharing her vision on the case before Nicola's body was found.
In her video, she claimed that she sensed intuitively from an "overwhelming smell of lemon bleach" that Nicola was still alive but being held captive and in "severe danger".
So many sleuths descended on St Michael's on Wyre that, at one point, cops had to issue a 48-hour dispersal order to clear the village of outsiders.
Lancashire Police has come under fire for its handling of the investigation generally.
The force now faces three external inquiries over the 23-day search for mortgage adviser Nicola.
The Independent Office for Police Conduct is probing a welfare visit to the family home made by an officer two weeks earlier.
And training and policy body the College of Policing will examine both the hunt and the decision to release information about an alcohol issue triggered by the menopause.
The Sun revealed last night that Lancashire Police was blasted by watchdogs three months before she vanished.
Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary found the force "requires improvement at investigating crime".
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It added that officers did not “always carry out thorough and timely investigations” and that “victims aren’t always updated on progress”.
Nicola was found a mile downstream from where she is thought to have fallen in.
