The mother of missing airman Corrie McKeague is considering legal action after police called off the landfill search for the RAF gunner.
Nicola Urquhart said she is getting advice about the possibility of an injunction to stop the search site from being filled in until “there is more honesty and plain speaking from police.”
She has also given her backing to an online petition calling on Suffolk Constabulary to continue the search, which had gathered 10,000 signatures within 12 hours of its launch.
Police called off the search of the sprawling landfill site near Cambridge on Friday, despite believing the serviceman’s remains are buried there.
Detective Superintendent Katie Elliott said officers had sifted through 6,500 tonnes of rubbish in an unprecedented search for the 23-year-old Fifer, who disappeared after a night out in September.
It is thought Corrie had passed out in a bin collected by a refuse lorry and dumped at the site.
Mrs Urquhart claimed the decision to stop searching there meant police had given up on finding Corrie.
“Suffolk Police have handed back the landfill and are trying to have it filled back in this week,” she said.
“Effectively, what we have been told…is if anyone wishes to dispose of a body, be that your child or mine, put it in a bin and let it go to landfill because they will simply walk away.”
She added: “One petition has started on the page for the search to be finished.
“I am getting advice about the possibility of an injunction to stop them filling the landfill in at least until there is more honesty and plain speaking from the police.”
Corrie’s father Martin McKeague said he was devastated by the announcement that the search had come to an end.
“At no point did we think that the search of the site would end this way and, as all the evidence tells us that Corrie is somewhere in that landfill site, we are heartbroken at the thought that we may not be able to bring Corrie home together,” he said.
“But we as a family are somehow going to get through this together.”
Police have commissioned an independent review of the work completed since the start of the investigation to see if anything further can be done to trace Corrie.
Ms Elliott said it was “bitterly disappointing” that he had not been found but added: “We have searched the whole area where we believe Corrie could be.
“Beyond that, it’s very difficult to establish exactly where we would search for Corrie.”
