During the evening of Wednesday 12th August, a 48 year old woman went missing from her home address in the Martland Hill area of Wigan, in circumstances giving Police concern for her welfare.

As the evening progressed, GMP instigated a search of the immediate area, which involved local Divisional Officers, NPAS Warton and GMP Dog teams.

In to the early hours of Thursday 13th August, the search was gathering momentum when sadly the body of the missing woman was located alongside a small lake in the Martland Hill area.

GMP at 02.54hrs paged the team for our immediate assistance in recovering the woman’s body from this location, which was at the base of a short but steep wooded slope at the edge of the lake.

Our Team Leader Garry Rhodes MBE liaised initially with Police and Officers on scene, resulting in a full call out page at 03.26hrs.

At this stage a small group of team members had already declared their immediate availability, and so a quick response was possible.

Our first team members arrived at the Martland Hill Lane RVP at 04.14hrs, and soon enough members were on hand to follow the Police Officer who was awaiting our arrival, to the incident location.

By 05.10hrs with due consideration given the sad circumstances of this incident, we commenced the evacuation of the woman’s body back to the RVP.

This incident concluded on scene at 05.43hrs with the last of our team members leaving the RVP leaving for home as a full and sunny dawn beckoned.

The following resources were involved in this incident:

• Greater Manchester Police
  • Force Duty Officer
  • Local Divisional Officers
  • General Purpose Dog Teams
  • CSI and CID Officers.
• National Police Air Service – Warton Police helicopter.
• Bolton Mountain Rescue Team
  • Twelve team operational members involved on scene
  • one team member assisting the initial team response from home (SARCALL log)
  • Three team Land Rover Defender Mountain Rescue Ambulances and our Incident Control Vehicle.

The team’s sincere condolences are expressed to the family and friends of the woman involved