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Missing airman Corrie McKeague was spotted an hour AFTER the final known sighting, a new witness claims.

A delivery driver has told police he saw the airman at 4.30am on the day he vanished – 66 minutes after he was last seen on CCTV during a night out.

Roy Hawes said he saw a man matching the gunner’s description 12 miles from where he was last seen entering a loading bay behind a Greggs.

But he says police failed to investigate his sighting properly. Roy, a 55-year-old bread delivery driver, said: “I saw him clear as day.”

Corrie, 23, vanished after a night out with RAF pals in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, near his Honiton base, on September 24 last year.

(Image: PA)

It later emerged his 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 the clothes in the police description – pink shirt, brown boots.

(Image: PA)

“He stopped on the central reservation and adjusted the jeans above his boots with his foot on the crash barrier.

“Then he ran to the other side and disappeared near an Esso station. He stood out because it was 4.30am, very cold and he was in shirt sleeves. It’s a notorious meeting place for swingers and doggers. I wouldn’t have thought it was a safe place for a lad on his own.”

Roy said he and his wife Maria both reported the sighting to Suffolk Police but detectives failed to follow up the lead.

(Image: SWNS)

A force spokesman said: “Police have the report, the time given was prior to Corrie’s phone leaving Bury St Edmunds. There was nothing to link this to Corrie.”

Detectives believe Corrie could have been crushed by a bin lorry after his phone was tracked. Specialists have spent more than nine weeks sifting through 2,850 tons of garbage and continue to comb Milton landfill in Cambridge.

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Corrie’s mum Nicola Urquart said: “I’m realistic. I know there will come a time when they have to stop, but that doesn’t mean that I’ll ever have to stop. There are far too many unanswered questions.”

The search for him has so far cost around £1million.