Yahoo News Mum of missing teen Jay Slater says searches have 'stepped up' but warns of online 'noise' impeding police
The mum of missing teenager Jay Slater has revealed the local police in Tenerife have 'stepped up' their search efforts to find the 19-year-old.
Jay, who is from Lancashire, has not been seen or heard from since Monday morning (June 17) when he told his friend he had just 1 per cent phone battery and did not know how to get back to his hotel.
His disappearance has prompted a search to be carried out across the north west of the Spanish island, involving the Civil Guard, mountain search teams and various other rescue resources in a desperate bid to locate him.
Friday was another day of 'no developments'. It marked the fifth day of intense and gruelling searches in and around the village of Masca, bordered by steep terrain and huge mountains with just one road in and out. The vast search area - around 30km - focuses on three main areas, Masca Gorge, La Vica, and Las Portelas.
Along with the dangerous landscape, leading to helicopters and drones being deployed, hot and extremely dry conditions reaching up to 25C also make the search all the more challenging. Civil defence teams were seen planning new areas to combat, using binoculars to map out the next phase in their efforts throughout the afternoon.
Jay's mum Debbie Duncan, who flew out to Tenerife with other friends and family the day after her son was reported as missing, spoke from her apartment on Friday, claiming local police had 'stepped up' their search as another day passed without any answers.
She said there have been difficulties with the 'language barrier' when dealing with local police, and that the current 'noise' surrounding the case, which has caught the attention of the media worldwide and caused social media speculation, was impeding the search.
“We’ve been there [the police station] all day today, and I think it’s been stepped up," she 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.”
She also praised the British Consulate for their ongoing support, but called on local police in the UK to be more involved.
Despite the ongoing missing persons investigation there are very few posters of Jay posted around the search area in Masca where he was last thought to have been before vanishing.
As the search efforts continued on Friday, the owner of the remote Airbnb where Jay Slater stayed the night before he vanished spoke out about the morning he 'walked off alone'. His last known location was where his phone 'pinged' in a vast mountainous area around half a mile north of Masca and the holiday cottage.
And speaking to the Manchester Evening News, local search teams from the Civil Defence lifted the lid on the areas they had been searching, revealing how the nature of the steep and treacherous landscape made the efforts all the more difficult.
Civil Defence officers at the search base explained how the vast area was split up into three different ravines and is around 30km wide. Explaining they were doing 'everything we can', 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."
A spokesperson for the Civil Guard, who are leading the search, confirmed to the M.E.N that a research of the Masca areas was being carried out on Friday. They could not provide any further update.
