Missing Tenerife teenager Jay Slater's friend says 'there's something weird going on'

The disappearance of British teenager Jay Slater in Tenerife has been described as 'weird' by his friend Lucy Mae, who was holidaying with him on the Spanish island. She last heard from Jay on Monday morning (June 17) when he told her his phone battery was low, he needed water, and was lost after staying in an apartment with people he met following a night out.

Speaking from Tenerife, Lucy revealed that Spanish police are 'keeping an open mind' during their investigation and search efforts in the Rural de Teno park, a hiker's haven near Masca village. Lucy expressed her disbelief at the situation, stating that Jay, 19, is 'not stupid' and it's strange that no one has spotted him since he went missing two days ago.

She said: "Jay's not stupid, it was just before 9am when he rang me so broad daylight and the area he was in is full of hikers. I've been up there every day ever since I got that phone call from Jay on Monday morning that made me panic and so many walkers and other people are up there.", reports the MEN.

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"It's secluded, but the spot where he last made phone contact with me is near a main road and he would have had the wherewithal to flag someone down, to wave someone down and ask for help. There's something weird going on.

"In two days, you're telling me someone's not seen him? There's a restaurant 10 minutes away that he would have seen or walked past.

"Fair enough it didn't open for another two hours, but if that were me I would have sat and waited at the restaurant until it opened and as soon as it opened I would have said 'please can you put my phone on charge' and then I would have rung someone, I would have rung a taxi. It's weird."

Jay, an apprentice bricklayer from Oswaldtwistle in Lancashire, had travelled with Lucy and another friend to the Canary Islands for a three-day music festival - the New Rave Generation (NRG) festival. The festival ended on Sunday.

Lucy left the festival early to go back to her holiday accommodation in the south of the island, leaving Jay to stay on with the friend they had travelled to Tenerife with from the UK and other friends he had met there. The teenager is then thought to have headed back for more drinks at the house of those friends without realising how far it was from his own rented place.

Lucy told the MEN yesterday: "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 8am saying his phone was on 1 per cent, he said 'I don't know where I am, I need a drink and my phone is about to die'."

Trying to hold back her emotions, Lucy recounted today where Jay was last known to be. "He was in the mountains but it was just off a main road so this is what I don't understand. He's not stupid, in my mind he's not going to go off a main path and down a sheer drop or cliffs unless he's been forced down by someone who could have been following him."

Lucy added that she has personally been searching every day, expressing her growing fear: "I've been up there myself every day. There's something not right. I'm really starting to think something's going on because someone would have seen him by now. I'm sorry but it's been 50 hours now. It's so busy up there, there's a lot of people around."

Lucy also raised concerns about the lack of information being shared with her: "That last location is like a viewpoint, it's a five to ten minute walk to the nearest cafe. I'm sure there's something going on. The police are not telling me anything and I don't know much about the people Jay went back from the festival with but they definitely should be spoken to if they haven't been interviewed already."

"I'd left the festival to come back to my hotel early because I was tired. Jay had stayed on with two new friends he'd made and a guy who we'd come with so there were four of them. I think those friends were British, although when I left the festival everyone was just mingling around. I took that last phone call from Jay around eight o'clock in the morning."

"I was asleep but I always sleep with my phone on ring in case there's something wrong. He just said to me, 'I need a drink, it's really hot, I don't know where I am and my phone's going to die."

"I said, 'If you're ever going to listen to anything I'm going to say to you, it needs to be now. If you're in the middle of nowhere with no water and no phone you're going to be f****d so you need to turn around and go back to wherever you came from and get help."

"He's like, 'I can't go back, I don't know where I am'. But he sounded very distressed and I don't know what's going on and I'm thinking now whether he was just distressed because he had no water or because of something else."

Speaking just before 11am today, a Civil Guard spokeswoman in Tenerife said officers were working to 'investigate all the possibilities'. "We are still searching for the missing man", the spokeswoman said.

"The search operation is being conducted by the Civil Guard and different units are participating. They include the helicopter unit, the cynological unit which uses dogs, the Greim mountain rescue and intervention unit and citizen security patrols."

"The helicopter unit has one helicopter which has been participating in the search since it began on Monday. We're not going to talk about the number of officers involved but it's a large operation."

"The focus area is the area where we were informed the missing man had disappeared which is the narrow valley within the Teno Massif called the Masca Gorge."

She added: "When there's a disappearance police always look at all options and investigate all the possibilities. In this case no hypothesis has been ruled out as you'd expect at the start of any investigation."

As well as the Civil Guard, firefighters and Civil Protection workers with drones are also taking part in the search operation. A Snapchat video of Jay showed him smiling and laughing the night before he went missing.

Jay's mum Debbie, who is said to be 'beside herself with worry', has flown out to the island to assist with the search for her son. Speaking yesterday, she said: "We're just praying the police or someone finds Jay."

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