The father of missing airman Corrie McKeague has urged people not to blame the binman whose incorrect data delayed a rubbish dump search.
Martin McKeague, of Cupar, said he felt no anger towards Hayden Stephens and hoped the 26-year-old binman could move on from the genuine error.
A massive search of the tip in Milton, near Cambridge, began last week after it emerged that a bin collection from the area of Bury St Edmunds where Corrie was last seen on September 24 weighed more than originally thought.
Biffa employee Stephens was arrested on suspicion of perverting the course of justice before Surrey Police concluded there had been a genuine mistake.
Although the lorry followed a route consistent with the signal from Corrie’s mobile phone, it was not thought he was inside as police were told the load weighed only 11kg.
It is now known it weighed 110kg, a revelation which Corrie’s mum Nicola has said could mean only one thing.
Martin told the Sunday Mail: “One young man’s life has been destroyed. We know we’ve lost Corrie, I don’t want to see another young life destroyed.
“I feel for this lad, he has my sympathy.
“I hope he’s able to move on and get his life back on track.”
Martin, himself a former binman for Perth and Kinross Council, said police told him that raw data collected by Biffa is quite in-depth and not easy to read.
He added: “If we had known the correct weight of the bin from the word go, the police would have been searching that landfill site within a couple of weeks of Corrie going missing.”
Meanwhile, Nicola, of Dunfermline, said she was clinging on the possibility her son may still be alive.
She told the Sunday Herald: “I know in my head that the chances of Corrie being alive are slim but I’m not giving up hope until he is found and brought home to me.”
She added two more photographs of 23-year-old Corrie to the Find Corrie Facebook page.
Beside one of him with fellow members of No 2 Squadron, RAF Regiment, she posted “pride and joy x”.
Corrie, a gunner based at RAF Honington, disappeared after a night out in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk.
The last sighting of him was at 3.25am on September 24, when CCTV footage showed him entering an area known as the Horseshoe which is used as a bin store.
It could take a team of eight trained officers up to 10 weeks to trawl through 60 tonnes of waste at the Milton landfill site.
