A TV detective has revealed the “real reason” Jay Slater didn’t wait for a lift from a remote village to where he was staying in Tenerife on the day he went missing. Mark Williams-Thomas has said he interviewed a man who drove with Mr Slater to an AirBnB in Masca after meeting in Playa de las Americas in the south of the island.
Ayub Qassim, 31, said Jay, 19, arrived at the AirBnB and left it alive following a party held after a music festival he had attended.
Jay, from Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire, was reportedly driven to Masca by Mr Qassim and a second man, whom Spanish police have both deemed to be of no relevance to their missing person investigation.
Mr Slater disappeared after setting off to walk back to his own accommodation in Los Cristianos on June 17. It is believed the apprentice bricklayer missed a bus and decided to make the return journey on foot, which takes about 11 hours.
Tenerife’s Guardia Civil called off the search for the teenager after helicopters, drones and search dogs were deployed to find him.
Mr Williams-Thomas told MailOnline he spoke to Mr Qassim, who is also known as “Johnny Vegas”. The TV sleuth, who is making his own enquiries and is not part of the official police response, claims Mr Qassim told him that on the morning after the party in Playa de las Americas he offered to drive Jay back.
Revealing the “real reason” Mr Slater allegedly turned down a life later in the day, the former Met Police detective added: “Qassim said to him ‘Chill, mate, I’ll drop you off later, when I wake up’, but he said Jay said, ‘Nah, I need some scran, I’m hungry’.”
Jay then reportedly told Mr Qassim that a woman had told him buses to Los Cristianos were every 10 minutes, but Mr Qassim said there wasn’t a bus, adding, “Do what you like”, before going back to bed.
Mr Williams-Thomas said Mr Qassim told him the next thing he could remember was getting a call from a friend of Jay’s to say he was lying in a ditch somewhere and had been “bitten by a cactus”.
The detective added that Mr Qassim didn’t reveal the identity of the second man Jay travelled to Masca with and refused to talk about the alleged theft of a Rolex watch, which some say is linked to Mr Slater’s disappearance.
Mystery still surrounds Mr Slater’s situation almost three weeks after he was reported missing. Jay’s holiday rental was only 10 minutes away from the nightclub where the music festival after party was being held, according to MailOnline.
Meanwhile, Mr Slater’s family is reportedly desperate for Spanish police to deploy drones and other equipment over Rural de Teno park where his mobile phone was last detected.
A source told the Sun: “They are desperate for permission to be granted that will allow them to use the specialist equipment they’ve identified.
“They’ve been speaking to experts who have suggested items that could help – things like [radar] tracking gear, drones and kit which can help at night-time too.”