A tour guide has expressed his shock as the frantic hunt for Jay Slater, the teenager missing in Tenerife, intensifies. The 19-year-old from Lancashire was last in contact on Monday, June 17, in the Rural de Teno park, north-west of the island.
His last known communication was reportedly a phonecall to a friend from the rural and hilly village of Masca, where he said he was lost and that his phone battery was on just one percent.
His last known whereabouts were in a large area approximately half a mile north from the Airbnb rental where he is believed to have stayed with two people he met at the NRG music festival.
Over the past week a significant search operation involving police, fire crews and mountain rescue teams, utilising drones, helicopters and sniffer dogs, has been launched in the desperate attempt to locate him.
The family has suggested that police are now investigating a potential, but unverified, additional sighting of Jay, seen walking through a church square in the remote village of Santiago del Teide. CCTV images seem to show a man strolling through the village square around 6pm on Monday.
Jay’s family say police are conducting CCTV enquiries but this has not been confirmed by the Civil Guard, reports the Manchester Evening News. Angel, a Travel Tenerife tour guide based in Santa Cruz, who regularly takes tourists to the Masca ravine told reporters on the ground.
He said: “I know they [police] are looking for him in the mountains but we don’t know anything else. It’s not in the Spanish media but it is here in the Canaries.
“In the south of Tenerife, it is huge, there are tourists from everywhere. Sometimes people disappear for one day, two days, there’s drinking and drugs, if they’re partying for example, but up here, nothing like this has happened before.
“For many days, lost in the middle of the mountains.. no, never, never. People are asking what was he doing in the mountains at 8 o’clock in the morning? It’s so strange, after the disco you wouldn’t finish a party in the mountains. It’s very dangerous.”
“Masca is very famous, people go hiking every day and police have to rescue people, but nobody has disappeared up here in the north.”
In the village, numerous missing posters featuring Jay’s images have been displayed on shop fronts. On Sunday, Jay’s devastated father Warren, while distributing leaflets, expressed that his son’s vanishing act “doesn’t make sense”.
He pleaded for anyone with information to come forward to the authorities. A local shopkeeper conveyed to the Manchester Evening News that the mountainous region where Jay was reportedly trekking is “extremely dangerous”. She mentioned that the police had not been inquiring with local establishments regarding the alleged sighting.
“For me, I feel bad. Because, he’s a young guy and what happened, shouldn’t have happened.”
“He should have been a little more aware of the fact that you can’t go [on that walk] alone.” Jay’s father Warren and other family members went back to the village of Santiago del Teide on Monday, armed with posters to distribute in the area.
There were several police vehicles parked at the bottom of the village, and it seemed they were conducting inquiries and questioning local business proprietors about his disappearance.