20 June 2024 , 15:21
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Apprentice bricklayer Jay Slater was last seen getting into a car with two people he met at a festival in Tenerife.
Jay, 19, went missing on Monday morning while on holiday in the Canary Islands with friends Lucy and Brad. The trio had enjoyed the three-day NRG music festival, which ended on Sunday, before Lucy and Brad headed back to their holiday accommodation.
The teen from Oswaldtwistle, Lancs, chose to stay out with new friends, one of whom had a rental car and was last seen getting in a car with them as they travelled to a property in Rural de Teno Park. At 8.15am, he called Lucy to say he was in the 'the middle of nowhere' and dehydrated, with just one percent left on his phone's battery.
A search team scours the mountainous region of Tenerife where Jay's phone last pinged (BBC)The young man said he had missed his bus and explained he was trying to find his way home - a 10 hour walk from where he was staying in Playa de las Americas - using a Maps app. The phone call cut out suddenly, with his phone battery depleting at 8.50am located in the rural national park. Jay hasn't been seen or heard of since.
"He's gone on a night out, he's gone to a friend's house, someone that he has met on holiday," Lucy told the Manchester Evening News. "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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"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." Jay's pal later told Sky News he had 'cut his leg on a cactus' as he tried to walk along a remote path.
Jay posted a Snapchat image of the house he had visited, showing mountains in the background. Lucy drove around the area until she found the property, using the mountains and flower beds as markers to locate it.
Lucy told how she followed the trail of her lost friend (Facebook)"We managed to find the house," she said. "I knocked on the door and there were two people there."
The occupants told Lucy how Jay had gone out for a cigarettes at the property in Buenavista del Norte before going back in and saying he wanted to go home. His last Snapchat photo was a blurry image of him holding a cigarette at the address at 7.30am.
"They told me he'd spoken to the next door neighbours and they'd told him there was a bus every 10 minutes back down to Los Cristianos," said Lucy. "The bus stop was right next to the house. So obviously if he'd gone to get the bus he wouldn't have got lost because it was visible from the front door."