Jay Slater: Spanish police reveal frustration but say they 'still have hope he's alive'

The desperate search for Jay, an apprentice bricklayer from Lancashire, continues
-Credit: (Image: PA)


The search for missing Lancashire teenager Jay Slater is being hampered by the "noise" surrounding his disappearance, his mum has said.

As the search for 19-year-old Jay, from Oswaldtwistle, enters its sixth day police in Tenerife have said that they won't stop looking "until the last moment when the last hope is lost". Search teams from the Civil Defence have talked about the areas they have been scouring for Jay but said the nature of the steep and treacherous landscape has made their efforts difficult.

Meanwhile, Jay's mum Debbie, who flew out to Tenerife on Tuesday, has described how the "noise" surrounding his disappearance has been hampering the search. She also told the M.E.N. how the language barrier has proved a problem.

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“We’ve been there [the police station] all day today, and I think it’s been stepped up," Debbie said. "We’ve had a problem with the language barrier. It’s difficult with all the Spanish police and British police; they have to let the Spanish police do the investigation.

"They [the police] have actually said that there’s too much noise - that’s affecting it. They’ve got all the plans, their locations. They have got this map they were showing us, all shaded in different colours.”

Civil Defence officers at the search base have explained how the vast area in Masca has been split into three different ravines and is around 30km wide.

A member of the team said: "We still have hope that he's alive, up until the last moment when the last hope is lost. The truth is that we feel a bit frustrated because we can't find him. It's so big [here] that it's very difficult to search in such a steep area. But we're doing everything we can."

Meanwhile, the owner of the Airbnb where Jay Slater stayed the night before he vanished has spoken about the morning he 'walked off alone'. Jay's last known location, where his phone 'pinged', is in a vast mountainous area around half a mile north of Masca and the holiday cottage.