Divers continue canal search for missing Nicola

SEARCHES continued to find the body of Nicola Payne.

A specialist team returned to a stretch of the Oxford Canal, just outside of Rugby, where new information suggests that this could be a key area.

It’s been almost 30 years since the disappearance of the 18-year-old, who hasn’t been seen since she walked home from her boyfriend’s house in 1991.

She left a baby, then aged just six months old, and her family are desperate to find her, and give her a dignified burial.

Specialist underwater search team SGI, led by Peter Faulding, returned to the area in the second day of the new search.

Divers trawled the area all morning - but as yet, nothing has been found.

The search has been focusing under and around a white footbridge over a small offshoot from the Oxford Canal about half a mile north of Newbold-on-Avon. The footbridge is next to a bigger road bridge, which takes the B4112 Rugby Road over the main part of the canal.

SGI were on scene, at their base at Armada Boat Hire, from around 9am, with a diver in the water just before 11am.

The diver searched the area on the corner of the main canal and the off-shoot, slowly and methodically checking every inch of the canal bed in a straight line, which is known as a fingertip search.

He then moved on to a search of the area under the footbridge. These searches took over an hour.

After this, a second diver entered the water to relieve the first diver. He checked the area further up from the footbridge along the off-shoot from the main canal. This is a tricky area to search, with lots of overhanging branches, debris and mud.

Mark Williams-Thomas, a documentary maker who is following the search for Nicola, said that information he had come across as part of his research led them to believe that this stretch of the canal is an area of interest.

He shared the information with West Midlands Police, who carried out their own assessment and agreed that the area should be searched.

SGI used high-tech sonar equipment to sweep the canal, which led to this specific part under the two bridges being identified as having “anomalies”. That’s why a more thorough, fingertip search by divers is being carried out.

Nicola’s family are being kept up-to-date with what’s happening with the search.