Jay Slater search leader explains why they won't search some areas for missing teen

Jay Slater
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The head of the mountain rescue team searching for Jay Slater has explained why they won't search some areas for the missing teen. Jay has been missing since June 17 after he vanished while trying to make an 11-hour trek back to his holiday accommodation in Tenerife.

A huge search took place today as skilled volunteers were called to the village of Masca, close to where Jay was last seen. Brigadier Cipriano Martin, head of the mountain rescue team, said there were some areas too dangerous to search - and explained that Jay would not have ventured anywhere where they won't search.

He said: "There are difficult areas and we've given instructions for people not to risk their own safety. But there's something we need to make clear, which is any area we don't go to, well, Jay won't have gone there either.

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"You have to think about it logically if I see there's vegetation in front of me and I'm going to get spiked, and I can't get through, then he won't have gone through that area either. We have to be logical, obviously."

Speaking about the search today he added: "We didn't find anything. It's a path that goes above and not along the bottom of the cliff, it has drops, and what's needed are ropes to get down and we also know he was not equipped for that.

"There are rocky drops that you cannot get beyond, you can only get down with a harness and ropes the people searching that spot today will have to turn around I think, because they don't have the necessary equipment, and anyway the best that Jay could do was simply to walk."

Jay had gone to an AirBnB in the Rural de Teno Park in the north of the island with two men he had met at a music festival on the island earlier that day. He called friends telling them he had decided to try and walk back to the south of the island and was thirsty and running out of phone battery.

His best friend later said he had seen his feet slipping over stones on a video call, suggesting he might have tried to venture off the main road.