The Mirror’s Patrick Hill, who spent nearly a month in Tenerife investigating the teenager’s disappearance last summer, this week returned to the island after an inquest found Jay had taken a cocktail of Class-A drugs before he died
The adjourned inquest of British teenager Jay Slater has left his family, including his heartbroken mum Debbie, desperate for answers about his final hours in Tenerife. But the hearing, which revealed toxicology reports and testimony about how the 19-year-old was “off his head on drugs” the night before he died last June, has also raised questions for officials here on the holiday island.Just how did the apprentice bricklayer, who had travelled on holiday from his home in Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire, only days earlier, come to obtain such a deadly cocktail of mind-bending Class-A drugs, including cocaine, ecstasy and ketamine? Having spent just shy of a month reporting on the teenager’s case on the island last year, I returned there this week and discovered that disturbingly, the answer is: Very easily.
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After stepping out of a taxi on Tenerife’s infamous Veronicas strip just before 11pm on Thursday night, a day after the inquest, it took a street dealer less than TEN SECONDS to offer me drugs. The man, who was holding a rack of cheap sunglasses aimed at party-goers, wasted no time trying to sell me them and instead launched into the sales patter for his other less visible products. Standing close as the sound of chart-topping dance music filled the air, he offered me cocaine for €80 (£67) a gram, MDMA, known as ecstasy, for €60 (£50) and cannabis for the same price. Just seconds after I declined and walked about ten yards further along the strip, another man, with a southern English accent, also tried to sell me cocaine.
And then, for the third time in little over a minute, I was offered the same drug yet again by another man, who was being employed to try and get revellers inside one of the bars.
The unedifying scene all played out just a stone’s throw from the strip’s Papagayo nightclub, where Jay was seen partying bare-chested with a facial expression consistent with drug abuse before he plunged to his death in June last year. Sitting down on an outdoor table outside one bar, where eight bottles of Heineken were being sold for just €20 (£16.79) it was impossible to escape the pungent smell of cannabis intermittently in the air.
Teenagers could also be seen inhaling balloons of nitrous oxide, a Class-C drug in the UK known as ‘hippy crack’, openly in the street, where empty canisters had been discarded. Over the course of the evening, it became clear that although uniformed police do patrol the area in vans, they are rarely seen on the strip itself and their efforts to fight criminality there, including drug dealing and prostitution, appear half-hearted at best.
At one point, Mirror photographer Andy Commins and I watched a police officer walking a sniffer dog along the strip, but bizarrely it was on the opposite side of the street from where the bars and revellers were. A bar worker, who had previously tried to sell us drugs and showed us how he hides his products inside an old plastic vape, laughed as he watched on. He gloated: “They’re not going to catch anyone walking the dog on that side of the street! …It’s all for show.”
Wednesday’s inquest, which was also attended by Jay’s dad Warren and Jay’s brother Zac, heard how Jay, who had drank between 10 and 15 vodka shots, messaged pals boasting about having a Rolex watch that had just been stolen on the strip. A two-second video sent from his phone to friends showed him claiming: “Just took a 12k rolly of some c*** wi this Mali kid off to get 10quid for it now haha off my undies.”
A second Snapchat message, which was sent around the same time and thought to reference luxury watch brand Audemars Piguetoff, read: “Yes cuz ended up getting thrown out of there me with two maili kids just took an AP some c*** on way to sell it for 10 quid.” After arriving at a holiday let some 22 miles away, rented by convicted drug dealer Ayub Qassim and Steven Roccas, Jay also sent a picture of himself with two knives in his trousers.
Speaking on the strip on Thursday night, a British tourist told me how the threat of crime remains almost 12 months on, as his friend had his phone stolen there the previous night. And a woman, who works on the strip, separately instructed us to watch our belongings, warning there are “lots of pickpockets in the area”.
Asked if the strip is dangerous, she said: “It can be. The police tend to watch from the end, so it’s mostly OK, but theft is a big problem and people can be targeted while walking away from it.” Echoing the begging tones of thousands of parents to their own teenage children, just like Jay, ahead of trips to Tenerife and other sunshine resorts this summer, she warned: “Be careful.”