Missing airman Corrie McKeague was spotted an hour after the final known sighting, a new witness has claimed.
A delivery driver has told police he saw the airman at 4.30am on September 24 – 66 minutes after he was last seen on CCTV during a night out.
Roy Hawes said he saw a man matching the missing gunner’s description 12 miles from where he was last seen in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk.
But he says police failed to investigate his sighting properly.
Roy, 55, said: “I saw him clear as day. I have five kids and, as a parent, I feel very sorry for his family. The police should follow this up.”
Corrie, 23, vanished after a night out with RAF pals near his Honiton base. It later emerged his mobile phone had been tracked moving 12 miles north-west to Barton Mills, the site of a rubbish tip.
Roy said: “He ran across the A11 at Barton Mills in front of my van. He was wearing exactly the same clothes in the police description – the pink shirt and brown boots.
“He stood out because it was 4.30am, very cold and he was in shirt sleeves. I think he was heading towards Newmarket but I lost sight of him as I was doing 70mph.
Most Read
“I drive that route regularly as I do a morning bread delivery in Suffolk.
“It is not an area you would want to stop at because it is a notorious meeting place for swingers and
doggers. He could have been abducted by someone there and bundled into a vehicle. Who knows? It certainly makes me doubt the rubbish tip theory.”
Roy and wife Maria both reported the sighting to Suffolk Police.
A spokeswoman for the Suffolk force said: “Police have located the report made, which said a person was seen running across the road.
“No description of the person could be given and it was said to have been around 4am but the caller could not be specific about the day.
“The time given was prior to Corrie’s phone leaving Bury St Edmunds.
“As part of early inquiries, police carried out searches in Barton Mills to see if Corrie could be located and carried out extensive CCTV viewing , which showed no positive sightings of Corrie leaving the area on foot.”
Don’t miss
Earlier this month, Corrie’s mum Nicola Urquhart, 47, of Dunfermline, spoke of her grief on ITV’s Good Morning Britain.
Police are combing through thousands of tonnes of waste at the Milton landfill in Cambridge.
A bin lorry bound for the site, which passed through the area Corrie was last seen, weighed more than 100kg – leading to fears it may have been carrying his body.
Top news stories today