Today marks the 280th day since RAF serviceman Corrie McKeague went missing after a night out in Bury St Edmunds as the landfill search for him continues.
Specialist officers have been scouring the landfill in Milton, Cambridgeshire, for 17 weeks and have now searched around 5,000 tonnes of waste at the site.
Suffolk police says the search will not go on indefinitely, but while officers are still finding rubbish with dates relevant to the time of Corrie’s disappearance - it will continue.
The area being searched has been expanded since specialist officers began examining the landfill on March 8, and police say the investigation is reviewed on a day-to-day basis.
• What we know about Corrie’s disappearanceCorrie, 23, was last seen 40 weeks ago on September 24, after a night out in Bury St Edmunds. He was recorded on a CCTV camera at 3.24am entering a refuse area behind Greggs, off Brentgovel Street.
It is believed he may have ended up in a bin lorry that collected rubbish from the Greggs bakery and was taken to the landfill site.
Police did not originally search the landfill as it was first thought that the Biffa bin lorry weighed just 11kg and could not have transported Corrie to the site.
However, in March detectives discovered the waste collection picked up from the horseshoe area behind Greggs on September 24 was found to be far heavier at more than 100kg.
A spokeswoman for Suffolk police said: “The search will not go on forever and ever, but while we continue to find refuse which is relevant to the dates of Corrie’s disappearance, then the search will go on.
“Officers have now gone through 5,000 tonnes of waste at the landfill and the search is reviewed on a day-to-day basis regarding the rubbish which is being found.”
Corrie’s mother said in a detailed post on social media last week that she “continues to wait for the phone call” in the search for her son.
Nicola Urquhart, 48, updated the 128,000 members of the Find Corrie Facebook group on Sunday.
She said: “Due to the rubbish that is being found, if Corrie is in this landfill he could literally be found tomorrow. So we continue to wait for the phone call.
“The police will continue to search this area of the landfill until they either find Corrie or the rubbish starts clearly and consistently showing it has gone back too far in date ranges, this is why no completion date can be given.”
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