Police sif t 60 tons of landfill in 3 days in search for Corrie
A FORENSIC team investigating the disappearance of RAF gunner Corrie McKeague has already trawled through 60 tons of waste at a landfill site.
A team of eight officers began working at the dump in Milton, near Cambridge, on Monday.
They are using a digger to excavate mounds of waste at a time before picking through it on the ground.
Yesterday, the search officers revealed that they have so far sifted through 60 tons of the landfill with no sign of Mr McKeague’s body or clues to his whereabouts.
But it could take up to ten weeks to search the rubbish, which is up to 26ft deep in places.
Mr McKeague’s mother Nicola Urquhart, who lives in Dunfermline, Fife, and is a police officer, has said the search of the landfill could ‘only mean one thing’.
She said: ‘We know we’re going to find Corrie in the landfill. It’s just a matter of time now.’
Mr McKeague, 23, who is from Dunfermline, vanished on a night out in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, on September 24. The search for him hit a wall after detectives found CCTV footage showing Mr McKeague entering a dead end with all exits covered by cameras, but no sign of him coming out.
A bin lorry was captured on CCTV nearby in the town around the time Mr McKeague was last seen and took a route which appeared to coincide with the movements of his mobile phone.
The lorry was initially ruled out of the search as police believed it had only collected an 11kg (1st 10lb) load. But officers have said it was later found to weigh more than 100kg (15st 10lb) – relaunching concerns that Mr McKeague’s body may have been transported to the local landfill.
A 26-year-old man had been arrested on suspicion of perverting the course of justice over the discrepancy in the weight of the lorry’s load.
But the man, who is not the lorry driver, faces no further action.
Detective Superintendent Katie Elliott said she does not believe there was a ‘deliberate attempt to mislead’ the investigation and has insisted that the focus must be on finding Mr McKeague.
She added: ‘Through the persistence of officers and their detailed work we recently identified that the data provided was incorrect.
‘The search of the landfill is a huge undertaking, and still may not provide the answer as to what happened, but this is now the priority.’