Jay Slater’s best friends Lucy Law and Brad Hargreaves, who travelled with the 19-year-old to Tenerife on his first and last mates’ holiday, ‘cannot be located’ as the inquest into the tragedy begins
As the inquest into Jay Slater’s tragic death begins, a number of questions remain, including what happened to the teenager’s devoted friends who desperately searched to find him.
Apprentice bricklayer Jay was found dead in a ravine in Tenerife’s rugged Parque Rural de Teno nature reserve on July 15, 2024, following a frantic month-long search. The 19-year-old, from Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire, travelled to the Spanish island in June last year with his friends Lucy Law and Brad Hargreaves to attend the NRG music festival in Playa de las Americas.
After leaving the event, in the early hours of June 17, Jay travelled with two men to an Airbnb in the desolate national park area, some 22 miles from the popular tourist spot of Los Christianos, where he, Lucy and Brad had been staying. It was then that Jay’s holiday abroad with pals, his first and, sadly, last, took a terrible turn. It’s understood that Lucy and Brad, who previously paid moving tributes to their “one of a kind” friend, are now nowhere to be found.
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Senior Coroner Dr James Adley, who is overseeing the inquest, has stated that Lucy and Brad “cannot be located.” Dr Adley revealed: “We can’t find them. They have denied who they are, and we have had police looking for them, but we can’t find them.”
The inquest heard that officers have attempted to serve a witness summons on Lucy Law but have been unable to locate her. Coroner’s officer Alice Swarbrick said that Lucy is understood to be currently in Tenerife. Meanwhile, Bradley is also currently understood to be on holiday, which was booked last October, the inquest has heard.
Lucy and Brad previously spoke of how they chatted with Jay as he attempted to walk back to their accommodation from the remote Airbnb, a journey that would have taken him 11 hours on foot. Tragically, he never made it.
At 8:15 a.m., Lucy received a phone call from Jay, who told her he was in “the middle of nowhere” and dehydrated, with just one per cent of his phone battery remaining. After missing his bus, the apprentice bricklayer explained to Lucy that he was attempting to make his way back using a Maps app. It was then that the call cut out suddenly, with his battery depleting completely at 8:50 a.m.
Lucy told the Manchester Evening News: “He’s gone on a night out, he’s gone to a friend’s house, someone that he has met on holiday. One of the people he has met has hired a car out of here, so he’s driven them back to his apartment, and Jay has gone there, not realising how far away it is.
“In the morning, he’s set off walking, using his Maps on his phone and ended up in the middle of mountains with nothing around.” Lucy later told Sky News that Jay had ‘cut his leg on a cactus’ as he attempted to walk along a remote path.
Appearing on This Morning on June 28, just two days before Spanish police called off the official search, Brad opened up about his own final conversation with Jay, who’d promised to video call him back after hanging up, as “someone else was ringing him”.
Showing emotion as he recalled Jay’s “zest for life”, Brad shared that Jay hadn’t initially been worried about finding his way back to his friends. He revealed that he could hear Jay’s feet sliding on the rocks indicating that he had “went off the road”. He explained: “That’s how I knew he went off the road because, you know when you walk on gravel, or whatever it is, you can… you know what I mean, stones.”
Brad continued: “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 ya back, I’ll ring ya back’ because I think someone else was ringing him. If he was thinking like me, he would have gone back up and started walking on the path again… He wouldn’t have gone all that way down there.”
When asked about his own concerns at that point, Brad replied: “Not at the time because we were both laughing and he said, ‘Look where I am’ and I was like, ‘I’ve just come out of a festival’ and he didn’t seem concerned on the phone until we knew how far away he was. I said, ‘Put your location on and he said ‘a 15 minute drive or a 14 hour walk, I don’t know if it’s accurate or not’ and I said, ‘If it’s only a 15 minute drive, get a taxi’.”
A post-mortem examination determined Jay had died of traumatic head injuries consistent with a fall from height, with a CT scan showing there was “a severe fracture of the head”.
After news of Jay’s death broke, Brad took to social media to pay tribute. He wrote: “No words. Nothing be the same without you Rest easy brother love you always.” Brad also posted a public story with another picture of the two of them, along with broken heart emojis.
Lucy also shared a social media post, in which she described Jay as having been “one of a kind”. Taking to Instagram, Lucy penned: “Honestly lost for words. Always the happiest and most smiley person in the room, you was one of a kind Jay and you’ll be missed more than you know. I’m sure you’ll ‘have your dancing shoes polished and ready’ waiting for us all. We all love you buddy. Fly high.”
The inquest continues.
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