Incident 34/2015 – Missing Portuguese woman in the Blackburn Road, Astley Bridge, Bolton area

At 10.04hrs this sunny morning, our Team Leader Garry Rhodes MBE was contacted directly by a GMP Missing Person Search Manager, regarding a missing woman from the Bolton area.

The 50 years old Portuguese woman, had been reported missing on Thursday 24th April, in circumstances giving GMP concern for her welfare.

Garry liaised with the GMP MPS Manager, and at 10.53hrs the full team was paged to assemble at The Valley, Astley Bridge for circa 11.30hrs.

Previous to this, our DVSD Dog Handler Dave Marsh had been recalled to join the search immediately, from a local training exercise with colleague DVSD Dog Handler Mike Dermody of British Transport Police, who also jointly responded.

As Dave and Mike arrived at the Search RVP at The Valley, and with the soon after arrival of our Team Leader Garry Rhodes MBE, it was quickly determined that sadly, the body of the missing woman had been located by members of the North West Police Search and Underwater Marine Unit in a nearby river.

Responding team members briefly held at the RVP should they be required to evacuate the woman’s body, but this sad task was carried out by members of the NWPSUMU later in the day.

A full team member stand down from this incident was made at 12.16hrs.

The following resources were involved in this stage of the search and ultimate recovery operation regards this missing woman;

• North West Police Search and Underwater Marine Unit; Five Officers and two vehicles.
• Greater Manchester Police; One Police Missing Person Search Manager, local Divisional Officers, 2x PCSOs, CID Officers.
• Bolton Mountain Rescue Team; Six members on scene, two Land Rover Defender Mountain Rescue Ambulances and our Incident Control Vehicle.
• Drowned Victims Search Dog Teams; two, Handler Dave Marsh (also included in Bolton MRT figure above) and DVSD Search Dog Sasha, and Handler Mike Dermody of British Transport Police and DVSD Search Dog Quincy. (Both Dave and Mike are also members of SARDA Ireland North)