“Someone would have seen him by now,” says the missing Tenerife teenager’s friend Jay Slater

Friend of missing Tenerife teenager says ‘he’s not stupid’.

Lucy Mae was on holiday with Jay Slater on the Spanish island. However, she last heard from the 19-year-old at around 8am on Monday 17 June.

Jay told his friend that he had 1% battery and needed water. He said he got lost after staying in an apartment with people he met after a night out, MEN reports.

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Speaking from Tenerife, Lucy said Spanish police were “keeping an open mind” during the investigation and search efforts in the Rural de Teno park, a hiking refuge near the village of Masca. Lucy expressed her disbelief at the situation, saying Jay, 19, is “not stupid” and it’s strange that no one has seen him since he went missing two days ago.

She said: “Jay is not stupid, it was just before 9am when he called me so big and the area he was in is full of hikers. I’ve been up there every day since I got that call from Jay on Monday. morning which made me panic and so many walkers and other people are up there.

“It’s isolated, but the place where he last made phone contact with me is next to a main road and he would have had the means to flag someone down, beckon someone over and call for help. Something strange is happening.

“In two days, you’re telling me someone hasn’t seen it? There is a restaurant 10 minutes away that they would have seen or passed by.

“Fair enough, it didn’t open for another two hours, but if it was me I would have sat and waited at the restaurant until it opened and as soon as it opened I would have said ‘please can you- put my phone on charge’ and then I would have called someone, I would have called a taxi. It’s weird.

Jay, an apprentice bricklayer from Oswaldtwistle in Lancashire, had traveled with Lucy and another friend to the Canary Islands for a three-day music festival – the New Rave Generation (NRG) festival. The festival ended on Sunday.

Lucy left the festival early to return to her holiday accommodation in the south of the island, leaving Jay to stay with the friend they had traveled to Tenerife with from the UK and other friends he had met there. The teenager is then believed to have returned for more drinks at those friends’ house, not realizing how far he was from his own rented place.

Lucy told the MEN yesterday: ‘He went out one night, he went to a friend’s house, someone he met on holiday. One of the people he met rented a car from here, so he drove them back to his apartment and Jay left there not realizing how far it was.

“He ended up in the middle of nowhere. Jay obviously thought he could get home from there. But then in the morning he set off on foot, using the maps on his phone, and ended up in the middle of the mountains with nothing around. He called me at about 8am, saying his phone was at 1 percent he told me “I don’t know where I am, I need a drink and my phone is about to die.”

Trying to contain her emotions, Lucy today told where Jay was last known to be. “It was in the mountains, but it was right next to a main road, so that’s what I don’t understand. He’s not stupid, in my mind, he’s not going to go off a main path and down a steep drop or cliffs unless he was forced by someone who might have been following him.”

Lucy also expressed concern about the lack of information shared with her: “That last location is like a vantage point, it’s a five to ten minute walk to the nearest coffee shop. I’m sure something is going on. The police aren’t telling me everything and I don’t know much about the people Jay returned from the festival with, but they should definitely be spoken to if they haven’t already been interviewed.”

“I left the festival to go back to the hotel early because I was tired. Jay had stayed with two new friends he had made and a guy we had come with, so there were four. The friends were British, although when we left the festival everyone was mingling, I got the last call from Jay around eight in the morning.

“I was asleep, but I always sleep with my phone ringing in case there’s something wrong. He just said, “I need a drink, it’s really hot, I don’t know where I am and my phone is going to die. “

“I said, ‘If you’re ever going to listen to anything I’m going to tell you, it’s got to be now. If you’re in the middle of nowhere with no water and no phone, you’re going to f****d up so you’ve got to go back and go back to wherever you came from and get help.”

“It’s like, ‘I can’t go back, I don’t know where I am.’ But he sounded very upset and I don’t know what’s going on and now I’m wondering if he was just upset because he was out of water or because of something else.”

Speaking just before 11am, a Tenerife Civil Guard spokeswoman said officers were working to “investigate all possibilities”. “We are still looking for the missing man,” the spokesman said.

“The search operation is carried out by the Civil Guard and various units are participating, including the helicopter unit, the canine unit using dogs, the mountain rescue and intervention unit Greim and citizen security patrols.

“The helicopter unit has had one helicopter participating in the search since the beginning of the month. We won’t talk about the number of officers involved, but it’s a large operation.

“The area of ​​focus is the area where we were informed that the missing man went missing, which is the narrow valley in the Teno massif called the Masca Gorge.”

She added: “When there is a disappearance the police always look at all options and investigate all possibilities. In this case, no hypothesis has been ruled out as you would expect at the start of any investigation.”

In addition to the Civil Guard, firefighters and Civil Protection workers with drones are also participating in the search operation. A Snapchat video of Jay showed him smiling and laughing the night before he disappeared.

Jay’s mother Debbie, who is said to be “worried herself”, has flown to the island to help search for her son. Speaking yesterday, she said: “We’re just praying the police or someone finds Jay.”

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