Missing teen Jay Slater's phone may have been thrown in chilling new theory

A former British Army officer has suggested that the mobile phone of missing 19-year-old Jay Slater may have been thrown prior to his disappearance. The teen was last seen on June 17, leaving an Airbnb in northern Tenerife near the village of Masca.

His phone's last known location was in the Parque Rural de Teno nature reserve, where Spanish police concentrated their search efforts before officially calling off the search. Despite this, his family continues to search for him.

Journalist Nick Pisa, who is covering the case in Tenerife, has proposed a new theory after speaking with an ex-British Army officer. He believes that Jay's phone may have been thrown, according to the Mirror.

Pisa explained that the phone's GPS location could only be possible "if the phone was thrown" into the terrain. Speaking to GB News, he said: "We're not obviously being kept up to speed, but [the former officer] did tell me that he thought where the ping came from was rather surprising because it was really steep to get to, and it was covered in undergrowth and cacti."

He added: "He said to get there you'd have to need a machete. Or he suggested, someone had thrown the phone into that growth."

Pisa disclosed that despite the Civil Guard concluding their official search, expert climbers are continuing the hunt for Jay with the full support of his family.

One reporter commented on the dedication of a particular climber: "I must admit, I've seen him up there several times, and he seems to be the more serious."

Lucy Mae Law, a close friend of Jay who accompanied him to the Canary Islands, was among the last to hear from him at approximately 8am on the day he disappeared.

He contacted her to say he was making his way back on foot to their accommodation after missing the bus, mentioning he was parched, weary, had sustained a cut from a cactus, and his phone battery was down to one per cent.

In a statement given on July 18, Lucy recounted the events leading up to Jay's disappearance, saying: "He's gone on a night out, he's gone to a friend's house, someone that he has met on holiday.

"One of the people he has met has hired a car out of here, so he's driven them back to his apartment and Jay has gone there not realising how far away it is. He's ended up out in the middle of nowhere.

"Jay was obviously thinking he would be able to get home from there. But then in the morning he's set off walking, using his Maps on his phone and ended up in the middle of mountains with nothing around. He rang me at about 8 o'clock morning saying his phone was on 1 percent. He said 'I don't know where I am, I need a drink and my phone is about to die'."

Lucy managed to successfully find the Airbnb where Jay was last seen on the day of his disappearance, guided by features in Jay's final Snapchat picture. She confronted a couple of men still at the location.

Describing the encounter, she said: "We managed to find the house. I knocked on the door and there were two people there."

According to them, Jay had stepped out for a smoke before coming back into the house expressing a desire to return home.

She continued: "They told me he'd spoken to the next-door neighbours and they'd told him there was a bus every 10 minutes back down to Los Cristianos."

Lucy suggested that getting lost was highly unlikely, given that: "The bus stop was right next to the house. So obviously if he'd gone to get the bus he wouldn't have got lost because it [the stop] was visible from the front door."