An unusual bin lorry load may hold the key to the case of missing RAF gunner Corrie McKeague, who disappeared six months ago after a night out with friends.
Suffolk police say the weight of rubbish collected in a wheelie bin close to where the 23-year-old was last seen was originally reported to be 24lbs, but detectives have discovered the load was actually closer to 220lbs, Sky News reports.
McKeague's mother, Nicola Urquhart, wrote on Facebook: "This can really devastatingly only mean one thing.
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"I can only pray that Corrie is found quickly and that we are able to get answers as to how this could have happened," she added, saying "each second waiting to find Corrie is torture".
Police will now concentrate their search on a landfill site Milton, Cambridgeshire.
McKeague, from Fife, joined the air force in 2013 and was posted to RAF Honington, ten miles north of Bury St Edmunds. He vanished after leaving a nightclub in the market town in the early hours of Saturday 24 September.
A local pub musician described him as a "regular", one of the many servicemen and women who enjoyed nights out in the town, reports the BBC.
CCTV footage shows the gunner walking through Bury St Edmunds alone and eating takeaway food before appearing to fall asleep in a doorway. At around 3am, he woke up and sent a text message to a friend as he resumed his wandering. At 3.25am, he turned into a cul-de-sac loading bay area known as "the Horseshoe", beyond the range of CCTV cameras.
This was the last time he was seen, in a sequence of events that has baffled detectives, as it appears impossible for McKeague to have left the area without retracing his steps in front of the CCTV cameras.
His disappearance made headlines nationwide, with speculation that he could have been targeted for attack or kidnap.
Two months before McKeague went missing, an airman was threatened with a knife by two men who attempted to drag him into a car near RAF Marham in Norfolk.
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