26 June 2024 , 16:49
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Jessica Ingham is the ex-girlfriend of missing teen Jay Slater and is longing to find him because he still means so much to her.
The search for Jay Slater, missing on the island of Tenerife is now in its ninth day and the 19 year old’s exhausted mum Debbie Duncan, dad Warren and older brother Zack are being supported by friends and family who have flown out to the Spanish island to help. Among them is Jay’s ex-girlfriend Jessica Ingham who has spoken about how worried they all are.
It’s not known how long ago the young couple broke up but they are still friends and Jay clearly holds enough of a special place in her heart for her to join the hunt with others close to the apprentice bricklayer.
Engineer Jessica, 19, flew out to the holiday island from Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire and along with close friends Aaliya Duxbury, Saul Wilkin and James Currie, joined the hunt scouring the mountains where Jay was known to have been. They have also been putting up missing posters in an attempt to raise awareness of Jay among locals and visitors.
Jay's mum Debbie Duncan made a heartfelt plea for help (ITV News)She told the Daily Mail how close she still is to her former partner, saying: "He's my ex boyfriend but we still keep in touch and he means a lot not just to me but all of us."
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Jessica also revealed that she believes there may be more to his disappearance because she thinks it’s out of character for him to wander off when the battery on his phone was so low. "There are things that don't add up but he knows what he's doing and he wouldn't go wandering off in the mountains with no battery on his phone," she said. "I really do think he's been taken and whoever has him needs to let him go and get home to his family and friends. We miss him and love him to bits."
The group met up with Jay’s mum when they arrived and she said Debbie, who has described the group as "good kids", gave them all a huge hug which made them all feel a bit better. However, Jessica is furious with the online detectives who she says are spreading "malicious rumours and gossip" which isn’t helping the situation.
She wants people to consider Debbie’s feelings more because she is "absolutely sick with worry" and doesn’t need to read the "rubbish" that online speculators have been writing about Jay. "Some people have been really hurtful," she added.
Jay's friend Lucy Mae (facebook)Jay went missing after a rave at the Papagayo nightclub in Playa de las Americas in the south of the island. He was on his first holiday abroad with two other friends and they had been at the NRG music festival - a three day event featuring beach and pool parties and day and night raves.
His two friends Lucy Mae Law and Brad Hargreaves left the nightclub at around 1am but Jay stayed. It’s believed he left at about 5am on Monday June 17 with two men he’d met that night and travelled 20 miles in a car to their Airbnb in a mountainous area north of the island in the village of Masca.
Jay shared two photos on Snapchat at 7.30am of him standing in the doorway of the apartment and another with a cigarette - these confirmed the location of Parque Rural de Teno, a national park popular with hikers. At 8.30am he called Lucy and told her he was lost after missing a bus, had one percent left on his mobile and was thirsty.
Rescue teams have been scouring the mountains (Stan Kujawa)His phone last pinged by a restaurant about half a mile from the Airbnb. Lucy raised the alarm at 9am and a missing persons report was filed as the search by Spanish police began.
Sniffer dogs, helicopters, drones and dozens of rescue workers have been scouring the mountains ever since as the desperate hunt continues. Hope was raised after grainy CCTV footage was released of a person walking past a church four miles from Masca at around 6pm on the day he vanished.
A local woman said she had told Jay in the morning he’d just missed a bus back to Los Cristianos where he was staying and the next one wasn’t until 10am. She said she saw him about 10 or 15 minutes later walking on the road out of the village.