Friend of missing Jay Slater says men last seen with him in Tenerife 'not random people'

A close pal of Jay Slater has revealed how the two men the missing teenager stayed with the night before he vanished were not strangers.

The 19-year-old, disappeared on Monday, June 17 in Tenerife, after leaving a music festival by car with two mystery men, who was described as being British.

Jay, from, Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire had travelled with the men back to their Airbnb just outside of the rural and "treacherous" Masca village.

Now, Jay's best friend Bradley Hargreaves has told two the men had befriended Jay and his pals three days before his apprentice bricklayer's shock disappearance.

Journalist Isla Traquair, who spoke to Jay's best friend Bradley Hargreaves, revealed that the men had befriended Jay and his pals three days before the 19-year-old went missing. She said Jay and his friends had met the two men around three days prior to the day he vanished, and got on well with them , the Mirror reports.

She explained: "It wasn't two random people he'd met that night. They'd established a friendship and Brad said they seemed like really cool guys." Traquair added that Jay returned to the Airbnb with the men because he "was just not ready for his night to end. However, he did communicate to his friends, via phone calls or texts, saying 'oh, these guys have just gone to bed, maybe I'll just come back."

The two men, whose identities have not been revealed, reportedly flew back to the UK after being briefly questioned by Tenerife police. Officers later told Sky News that the men were "not relevant" to the search.

Jay's other friend, Lucy Mae Law, who joined him and Brad on the trip said she managed to track the men down at their Airbnb before they left, using photo clues from Jay's Snapchat, which revealed his location.

She said: “They seemed startled and surprised that I had found them, and I asked them where Jay was. They said he had gone out to try and look for cigarettes and then come back and said he was leaving to try and get a bus back into town.

"They just seemed shocked that I had managed to find them and I know the police have spoken to them but I’ve since found out they have left the country. They need to be spoken to properly.”

It has now been more than two weeks since Jay vanished in Tenerife – and with no new leads or sightings of the 19-year-old since, Spanish police announced on Sunday they would officially be ending their search.

Jay's loved-ones are said to be ­“devastated” and “heartbroken” by the decision to stop the search, but revealed they would keep on looking for Jay in Tenerife. Rachel Hargreaves, the mother of Brad Hargreaves and close friend of Jay’s mum Debbie Duncan, 55, said: “Nothing has changed. We’re still going to go out and search. No one is leaving until we find Jay. We stay, we do what we need to.”

Meanwhile former British detective Mark Williams-Thomas, who joined Jay's family in Tenerife to help in the search, advised the family to use the £47,000 GoFundMe cash to fund a private search after Spanish authorities stopped looking for the missing British teen.

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