19 June 2024 , 10:49
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Jay Slater was having the time of his life on his first holiday abroad with friends in Tenerife when he decided to extend his night out.
The 19-year-old apprentice bricklayer, from Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire, chose to head off with a friend, who had a hire car and was staying elsewhere, while his other pals returned to their accommodation. However two days later, Jay is still nowhere to be seen.
He was last captured on Snapchat, wearing a grey t-shirt with a green trim, in the early hours of Monday and ended up in a rural area. Jay told friends he had missed his bus back to his hotel and instead embarked on the 11-hour walk using maps on his phone.
A Snapchat clip has revealed what Lancashire teenager Jay Slater was wearing the night before he went missing while on holiday in Tenerife (No credit)Shortly after starting the lengthy journey, he called his friend Lucy at around 8am to warn her that his phone was about to run out of battery. His last known location registered near a hiking trail, several hundred feet above the small village of Masca.
Lucy says that Jay complained of being thirsty and that he was lost. She told the MEN: "He's gone on a night out, he's gone to a friend's house, someone that he has met on holiday. One of the people he has met has hired a car out of here, so he's driven them back to his apartment and Jay has gone there not realising how far away it is.
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"He's ended up out in the middle of nowhere. Jay was obviously thinking he would be able to get home from there. But then in the morning he's set off walking, using his Maps on his phone and ended up in the middle of mountains with nothing around. He rang me at about 8 o'clock morning saying his phone was on 1 percent."
She added: "He said 'I don't know where I am, I need a drink and my phone is about to die.'" Shortly after 9am, police on the island were alerted and have said they are doing everything they can to find the missing teenager.
Jay Slater's last known locationThey are working with the British Embassy, while Jay's mum, Debbie Duncan, has flown out to Tenerife. She said Jay may have consumed "a fair bit of alcohol" in the period before he went missing, but that crucially, his friends had reported him being in a stable state of mind at the time.
She said: "I just think it was a question of him not knowing the island well enough because it was his first time here and being a bit disorientated when it came to distances and not realising it was a 10-hour walk from where he went missing to his holiday accommodation.
"I know the last place he spoke to his friend Lucy from was in the mountains and I think the police have got a more precise location now. I imagine they're also speaking to the people whose place he went back to. Once I've spoken to the British consulate again I’ll be clearer about what I’m going to do but I imagine we will head up north nearer the spot Jay was when he disappeared.”
Step-dad Andy Watson, 63, told LancsLive that it was less than 24 hours later when officers back in Oswaldtwistle knocked on their door. "When the police said 'the best thing you can do is get yourself out there' we knew it was bad," he said. "This was his first holiday on his own. I'm just hoping he's gone to another party."