Jay Slater’s best friend Lucy Law said he was always “the happiest person in the room” after a body was found in the search for the missing teen.
Rescuers found human remains in a ravine Monday four weeks after the 19-year-old from Lancashire disappeared on June 17 while on holiday with pals, Miss Law and Brad Hargreaves.
Miss Law said of her best friend Jay Slater: “Honestly lost for words. Always the happiest and most smiley person in the room, you was one of a kind Jay and you’ll be missed more than you know.
“I’m sure you’ll ‘have your dancing shoes polished and ready’ waiting for us all. We all love you buddy. Fly high.”
Lucy was reportedly the last person to speak to Mr Slater and set up a GoFundMe page to raise money for Jay’s family. The page raised £50,000 with some of the proceeds used to help in the search.
Lucy and Jay had attended a rave at Papagayo nightclub on June 16 during the NRG music festival in Tenerife. She recounted on the GoFundMe page how she had left the party earlier than everyone else and was woken up by a call from Jay at 8am.
According to Miss Law, he told her he had missed the bus home after staying with two men he met at the club and was faced with a 10-hour walk back to his hotel from their accommodation near Masca.
He mentioned he was lost, his phone’s battery was about to die and he needed water. Miss Law is believed to have tracked down the two men who saw him an hour before he disappeared.
They told her Jay had gone out to buy cigarettes before returning and then left to catch a bus back to his accommodation.
A woman from the US later offered Lucy a lift to search the mountains where Jay was last seen, but there was no sign of him. Lucy described his disappearance as “weird and suspicious”.
Miss Law’s tribute comes after a message was posted on an Instagram account believed to be Mr Hargreaves’. It read: “No words. Nothing [will] be the same without you[.] Rest easy brother[,] love you always”. The caption accompanied a picture showing Brad and Jay lying on an inflatable mattress.
The Charity LBT Global announced on Monday (July 15) that while formal identification has not yet taken place, the remains were found with Jay’s clothes and possessions near his last known location.
Members of a mountain rescue team from the Spanish Guardia Civil discovered the body near the village of Masca.
The force said Mr Slater, from Oswaldtwistle, could have fallen in the steep and inaccessible area where he was discovered.
It released video footage of rescuers climbing rock faces and battling through scrub as they carried out the search.
Part of the clip shows two members of the search team being winched out of the area by helicopter after the body had been found and recovered.
The Guardia Civil said on Monday its officers were waiting for the results of a post-mortem examination to confirm Mr Slater died as a result of an accident.
Spanish police called off the search for the apprentice bricklayer at the end of June after helicopters, drones and search dogs were deployed to find him.
But in its statement on Monday, the force said teams had not stopped searching every day. It said: “The discovery was possible thanks to the incessant and discreet search carried out by the Civil Guard during these 29 days, in which the natural space was preserved so that it would not be filled with onlookers.”