Yahoo News Questions remain unanswered as search for Jay Slater goes into fourth week
The search for missing teenager Jay Slater, 19, continues into its fourth week, leaving his devastated family without answers. Despite official searches being called off and his friends beginning to return home, the quest for closure by Jay's loved ones is far from over.
All leads have so far been unfruitful; however, Spanish police maintain they haven't lost hope of finding him. After extensive searches through the perilous terrain of Masca and the Rural de Teno park, numerous desperate pleas for information, and assistance offers from former detectives and mountaineering experts, the disappearance of Lancashire lad Jay remains an enigma more than three weeks later.
Jay vanished on June 17 after a night out with his mates in the Playa de las Americas resort. He had returned to a secluded Airbnb in Masca, about an hour's drive away, before allegedly wandering off alone. He hasn't been spotted since, reports the Manchester Evening News.
What ensued was nearly two weeks of relentless searching, involving mountain rescue teams, the Civil Guard, Civil Defence and fire crews, and a plethora of resources including specialist sniffer dogs from Madrid and helicopters. Simultaneously, Jay's family and friends were conducting their own desperate investigations, putting up posters in nearby villages and sharing information about a potential - but unverified - sighting of the teenager in the village of Santiago del Teide on the evening of June 17.
A Facebook group, boasting over 600,000 members, has been keeping the public informed about the ongoing investigation. However, the case's global attention has also attracted online detectives and trolls who have persistently targeted Jay's family with abuse.
Now in its fourth agonising week, Jay's parents have remained steadfast in their quest to locate him. Despite the media frenzy, his father Warren and older brother Zak have been frequently spotted in the area where Jay was last seen, conducting their own searches with a small team's assistance.
On Tuesday (July 9), police maintained that several lines of enquiry were still being explored. A source close to the case insisted investigators were not operating under the assumption that Jay was 'missing feared dead' and that 'several lines of inquiry are being pursued. This latest statement came as it was thought that some of Jay's friends and family had started returning to the UK.
However, for Jay's parents Warren and Debbie, who are still over 2,000 miles from home, life is far from normal. Jay's father Warren criticised two 'wild goose chases' as he expanded his personal search for the missing teenager. Warren was accompanied by Jay's brother Zak in a strenuous search of Tenerife's rugged valleys, where the 19 year old was last seen. He expressed frustration with the challenging landscape, stating it would take an army 10 years to search all of the mountainous terrain.
Over the past weekend, a small search team dedicated an entire morning to combing through mountain ranges in Los Carrizales Valley before directing their efforts towards the hills. Their focus has since shifted from Barranco de Juan Lopez Valley, near Masca village, identified as the last known location where Jay's mobile phone signal was detected.
Warren voiced his dissatisfaction with the local police inquiry, lobbying for British authorities to intervene and assist the family. He stated: "We need to, as a full family, do a proper press conference and ask the British authorities to help. He's a British citizen. Get Interpol involved."
"It's just us. I haven't got a team. We need a team to come over here and find out for us what the police are doing and what we need to do. Our hands are tied over here, we need experts. How long can you stay here for? ".
Jay's uncle Glen Duncan echoed this concern, labelling his nephew's vanishing as 'suspicious' whilst expressing scepticism over the efforts of the Spanish law enforcement, stating: "I feel like marching down there myself and bursting into the police station."
This sense of frustration wasn't exclusive to family members but was also felt by Paul Arnott, a UK climber who altruistically ventured to Tenerife to contribute to the search mission. In response to the final 'massive search', planned a day prior to the cessation of the search operation, he described it as a 'PR stunt' asserting that 'nobody was doing anything'.
According to MailOnline, Jay's friends Lucy Mae Law and Brad Hargreaves, along with his uncle Glen Duncan, have since returned to the UK.
The last known location of Jay's mobile was traced to the mountainous area near Masca village, which became the cntral point of the Spanish police's intensive search efforts before they were officially halted. Presently, Jay's family and a small group of dedicated volunteers continue the search on the island.
Shane Yerrell, a mayor from Essex, joined the search last weekend, dedicating two days to scour the region where the 19 year old was last spotted. Shane, who serves as the mayor of Waltham Abbey in Essex and has experience climbing Kilimanjaro and Mount Olympus, shared: "They're just living on hope. It's awful - they've got no answers. They don't know whether Jay is alive or dead."
"They are doing everything to find him. They're not just out for an hour, they're out all day 9.30am until 6pm. We covered miles, but there's still a lot of ground to cover."
"I feel for all of them, his dad in particular. I'm a parent and my child is only a few years younger than Jay. The whole thing is heartbreaking not having any answers. They just don't know."
