Parents of British teen Jay Slater who went missing after attending Tenerife techno festival NRG make fresh appeal

24 June, 2024

Jay Slater search

The parents of Britsh teen Jay Slater, who went missing after attending the Tenerife techno festival NRG, have made a fresh appeal.

The 19-year-old Mr. Slater attended the festival in Playa de las Americas on Sunday, June 16 before going to the village Masca with two people he met at the event.

His friends he had been holidaying with have not seen him since, but on the following day (June 17) he spoke to one of them on the phone and told her he was lost, in need of water, and only had 1% charge on his phone, according to Sky News.

During the short phone call, he said he had missed a bus trying to get back to his holiday accommodation so was attempting to walk instead – a journey that takes 11 hours.

Urgent searches, involving Civil Guard officers, firefighters and mountain rescuers, have been ongoing in the vast area since his disappearance.

Now his parents have shared a blurry new image which appears to show a male walking past a church in the village at around 6pm on Monday – around ten hours after he was reportedly last heard from and issued a fresh appeal.

Speaking from the village of Santiago del Teide yesterday (June 23), the teenager’s father Warren said (via Manchester Evening News]: “You think, has somebody got him? Because no matter if you were drunk or whatever, you don’t go off that road up there. And there are people up there… you don’t go along that road for more than 20 minutes without somebody stopping you or passing you.

“I knew right from when I went up there that he wouldn’t have gone [off that road]. He isn’t stupid. When I saw the police I asked them, seriously, ‘would you go off that road?’ and I think it woke them up a bit.”

He added: “It started out as it being a lad who had gone walking and got lost, or that he may have fallen. But it doesn’t make sense. Nobody would walk off that road. Why would he have gone uphill?

“It’s dangerous; it’s a massive mountain. It’s not just a hill. It was only when I went up there myself [that I noticed]. People that go out to a party don’t come up here.”

Outbuildings close to where Slater’s phone last picked up a signal are also the current focus of a police search in Tenerife.

His mother Debbie Duncan has thanked those who had donated more than £30,000 to a GoFundMe page.

Asked how the family were coping, she told PA: “We’re not. I’m not coping very well at all. I’ve not slept, I’m exhausted. It’s been awful. I can’t give up on him, I just can’t.”

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