Search parties looking for teenager ‘still have hope’ for Jay Slater will be found alive

Search parties leading the hunt for missing Jay Slater in the “dangerous” mountains of Tenerife are “still hopeful” the teenager will be found alive.

The 19-year-old, from Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire, has not been seen or heard from since Monday morning, June 17. She had been staying in an Airbnb rental with two men she met after spending Sunday night at the NRG festival.

Jay, who is understood to have left the holiday cottage on foot and alone, called his friend Lucy to say he was lost – and his phone only had 1% battery left.

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The last cell phone data was reported in a remote mountainous area about half a mile north of the small village of Masca. As the search entered its fifth day, Civil Defense officers at the search base told the Manchester Evening News that the vast area, divided into three different ravines, was about 30km wide.

A member of the team revealed that they are currently searching three different areas – Cheile Mascai, La Vica and Las Portelas, as well as the surrounding Masca area.

Apart from a windy and challenging main road through Masca, there are very small trails with kilometers of challenging terrain. A member of the specialist search team confirmed that drones and police dogs had not been deployed on Friday, making the already challenging search even more difficult.

A member of the Civil Defense search team said: “We still have hope that he is alive, until the last moment when the last hope is lost. The truth is that we feel a little frustrated because we can’t find him. That’s right. big ( here) that it is very difficult to search in such a steep area But we do our best.

“I haven’t found anything, I’ve combed this whole trail, up and down but so far nothing. This morning we concentrated on searching from below, up the Mask, along the path until it almost reached it. ravine, in the high part, without finding anything.

“Now the second part was this trail that goes up and almost reaches Las Portelas, the high part of the Las Portelas trail, and nothing was found either. We went to the ravine to see where he supposedly took his last selfie and went down from there.

“We are expecting this afternoon for the drone units to come in once more to fly over the area and the search dogs again. Very hard… it’s a very hard area to search. Just because it’s so steep.

“Yesterday there were 25 volunteers, five dogs among them, and four volunteer drones, in addition to the professional ones. We are focusing our searches in 3 ravines, on an area of ​​at least 30 square kilometers.”

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