A close friend of the missing teenager Jay Slater has revealed that two men the teen was staying with in Spain were “not two random people” as the search crosses the 15-day mark.
Slater, 19, from Oswaldtwistle in Lancashire, vanished on Monday, June 17, after leaving a music festival in Tenerife alongside the two men – who are allegedly British.
He had travelled to an Airbnb in the village of Masca, which the duo are said to have rented, before setting off on the 11-hour walk back to his accommodation.
Family and friends have flocked to Tenerife to assist authorities’ investigation efforts, but just before Spanish police called off their search on Sunday, one of Slater’s friends opened up on the pair of apparent Britons.
Bradley Hargreaves, a friend of the 19-year-old Slater, spoke to ITV’s This Morning – and host Isla Traquair summarised what he said.
She explained: “It wasn’t two random people he’d met that night. They’d established a friendship and Brad [Hargreaves] said they seemed like really cool guys.”
Traquair said that Slater returned to the Airbnb with the pair because he “was just not ready for his night to end”, adding: “However, he did communicate to his friends via phone calls or texts, saying: ‘Oh, these guys have just gone to bed, maybe I’ll just come back.'”
The Airbnb renters were later ruled “not relevant” to the case, and have reportedly since returned to the UK.
MORE AS THE JAY SLATER SEARCH STRETCHES ON:
Images from the mountains of Tenerife reveal just how large the search area is
PA
Hargreaves said that his friend had been on a video call with him before his disappearance when he heard him go off the road.
He said: “He was on the phone walking down a road and he’d gone over a little bit – not a big drop – but a tiny little drop and he was going down, and he said: ‘I’ll ring you back, I’ll ring you back,’ because I think someone else was ringing him.”
Hargreaves also confirmed he could see Slater’s feet “sliding” down the hill and could hear he was walking on gravel.
But he said he and his friend were both laughing at that point, adding: “He didn’t seem concerned on the phone until we knew how far away he was.”
Investigators had scoured the area far and wide before calling off the search
PA
Debbie Duncan said the money raised online would be used to support mountain rescue teams
PA/ITN
The last person to speak to Slater, an apprentice bricklayer, was his friend Lucy Law.
Law said the teen had told her in a frantic phone call before he went missing that he was “lost in the mountains, he wasn’t aware of his surroundings, he desperately needed a drink and his phone was on one per cent”.
Meanwhile, she set up a GoFundMe appeal, “Get Jay Slater Home”, which had raised more than £43,000 as the police search came to an end.
Slater’s close family has travelled to the island in order to help in any way they can – and his mother, Debbie Duncan, has said the money raised online would be used to support mountain rescue teams and to cover her own accommodation and food costs.
