Police in Tenerife have called off their search for missing British teenager Jay Slater on Sunday nearly two weeks after he disappeared.
The 19-year-old, from Oswaldtwistle near Blackburn in Lancashire, was last seen on Monday 17 June after he told a friend he planned to walk from the northwestern village of Masca to his holiday accommodation in Los Cristianos in the south – a journey that would take 11 hours on foot.
It may never be known what happened to Mr Slater after the teenager attempted to walk through northern Tenerife’s rugged and dangerous mountainous terrain.
Obviously, the biggest mystery is what happened to him, but extensive searches have taken place and, so far, there has been no trace of a body and no other clear clues as to where he ended up.
Further uncertainties remain. Here we take a look at the main unanswered questions so far.
Who were the men he went to northern Tenerife with?
Mr Slater had been holidaying with friends in Tenerife when they decided to attend the NRG music festival in the tourist hotspot of Playa de las Americas, in the south of the island.
After the event ended on Sunday 16 June, the teenager travelled back to a house in Masca in Tenerife’s northwest with two men he had made friends with on the island.
The identities of the two men have not been reported but police have told Sky News they are “not relevant” to the search.
Journalist Isla Traquair interviewed Mr Slater’s friend, Bradley Hargreaves.
She said Mr Slater and his friends had met the two men around three days before he went missing and got on well with them.
“It wasn’t two random people he’d met that night,” she said.
“They’d established a friendship and Brad said they seemed like really cool guys.”
She said Mr Slater had gone back to the Airbnb with the men because he “was just not ready for his night to end.”
Traquair added: “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.”
Mr Slater shared a Snapchat photo at 7.30am on the morning he went missing, showing himself with colourful fabric around him.
Traquair said Mr Hargreaves told her that Mr Slater had shown him the fabric in a call, and that it was a blanket the men had given him for a bed they had made up for him.
Why didn’t he catch a bus instead of walking?
The last person to see Mr Slater in person was Masca local Ofelia Medina Hernandez.
The cafe owner said she spoke to the teenager at 8am on the morning he went missing, telling him a bus was due at 10am.
However, she said he set off walking and she later drove past him “walking quickly”.
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‘Jay Slater asked me for bus times’
At around 8.30am, Mr Slater told his friend Lucy Law in a phone call he was walking back to his accommodation after missing a bus.
It is not clear if the teenager ever tried to return to the bus stop before he went missing.
He told Ms Law he only had 1% battery – meaning it would have been too late for him to phone for a taxi if he became lost.
Ms Law told Sky News that Mr Slater is “not a stupid boy” and would have flagged down a passing car if he saw one.
Masca is set within a rugged, remote and hilly area and the temperature is thought to have been around 26C – meaning Mr Slater faced a challenging walk back to his accommodation on foot.
Emergency workers near the village of Masca, Tenerife.
Pic: PA
What route did Mr Slater take down the mountain?
The teenager’s precise route is of course not known, but it’s clear that he chose to leave the road and walk across more challenging terrain.
Ms Law said Mr Slater told her over the phone that he had “cut his leg on a cactus”.
When she told him to return to where he had walked from, he said he did not know where that was.
He was without food and water and wearing a T-shirt and shorts.
On Friday 28 June, Mr Hargreaves told ITV’s This Morning he had video calls with the 19-year-old as he tried to walk back to Los Cristianos.
A rescue team searches for Mr Slater. Pic: Europa Press/AP
Mr Hargreaves said the teenager had left the road and he saw his feet sliding on rocks.
He added that Mr Slater went down a “little drop” in one of his last video calls.
“He said, ‘look where I am’. He didn’t seem concerned on the phone until we knew how far away he was,” Mr Hargreaves said.
“I said, ‘put your location on’. He said: ’15-minute drive, 14-hour walk’. I don’t know if it’s accurate or not so I said to him: ‘It’s only a 15-minute drive, get a taxi’.”
Mr Slater’s phone last pinged in Rural de Teno Park in northwestern Tenerife before it ran out of battery.
Jay Slater and his mother, Debbie Duncan. Pic: Lucy Law
Who was shown in the CCTV image shared by the family?
Around a week after Mr Slater was last seen, his family shared a blurry image of what they believe could be the missing teenager on CCTV in a town near to Masca 10 hours after he was first reported missing.
Sky News was not able to verify the source of the picture.
The sighting has not been confirmed by Spanish police but Mr Slater’s parents were hoping that it may help bring their son home.
The mayor of the Tenerife town of Santiago del Teide, where it was said the CCTV still was captured, later said he did not believe the image was from there.
It remains unclear where the still was taken and who it shows.
Helicopter searches for Jay Slater
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Why has the police search ended now?
Police and mountain rescue teams spent nearly two weeks looking for Mr Slater before calling off the search on Sunday 30 June.
Firefighters, specialist sniffer dogs, drones and helicopters were also involved in the search.
Police have not revealed if they have a specific reason for their decision to stop looking for Mr Slater.
A Civil Guard spokeswoman said: “The search operation is no longer active, but the case is still open and there are several lines of investigation.”
She added: “The search has gone on for many days because it is a rocky area that is hard to access.”
Source Agencies
