Jay Slater's dad begs for volunteers to help find missing son saying they 'need an army'

Jay Slater's dad has vowed “we are not going to stop” as he continues searching for his missing son.

Alongside Jay's brother Zak, Warren Slater has been desperately trying to find the 19-year-old by hiking through the treacherous mountains in Tenerife every day. On Thursday, Warren returned to the Valley of Barranco de Juan Lopez, close to the village of Masca, where Jay’s phone last pinged three-and-a-half weeks ago.

He said: “We are still out looking. What more can we possibly do? I’ve said before, I need an army to help me. People don’t understand the vastness of it.”

As reported by the Mirror, Warren looked out over the treacherous rocks, brambles and cacti as he added: “I’d love to be able to fly a drone and sit here all day scouring the whole area. Why would you go down there? Why leave the road?”

Warren believes someone must have spotted his son as he walked up the road from the village of Masca. He added: “When we came on Monday we must have passed 200 cars going up those hills.”

Pointing to one of the conspiracy theories - that Jay is still alive in another part of Tenerife - he said: “It’s all speculation, I hope that’s true.” He added that if it was true then he would surely have made contact. Addressing the people spreading the theories he then said: “Stop, and put your boots on if you want to come out and help. Then write it up.”

He said they had still heard little from the police - who called off the official search after two weeks, adding: “It’s the way they work and we have to respect that, it’s their system.”

Apprentice bricklayer Jay, from Oswaldtwistle in Lancashire, disappeared on the Spanish island on June 17. He was last seen leaving an Airbnb in the north of the island, close to the village of Masca.

The teenager, who was on holiday with his pals Lucy Law, 18, and Brad Hargreaves, 19, had previously been partying at the Papagayo nightclub in Playa de las Americas. He left the event with two British men to go back to the rented property - local police concluded the men were ‘irrelevant’ to the investigation and allowed them to return to the UK.

One of the men was convicted drug dealer Ayub Qassim who has said: “I let the geezer stay at mine because he had nowhere else to go. His friends had all left him. I know Jay, through friends, I'm not going to bring someone back to mine if I don't know them.

“I'm doing the geezer a favour and now my face is all over the news. It's a bit mental. I haven't even done anything.” Qassim added: “The only comment I have to make is that Jay came to the house alive, and he left the house alive.”

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