Jay Slater has still not been found as his loved ones reach their third week of searching.
The apprentice bricklayer, 19, seemingly vanished on June 17 in the remote Rural de Teno area of Tenerife while holidaying for a three-day music festival with friends. The teen left his pals to travel to a quiet Airbnb with two other British partygoers in the early morning and later attempted to walk 11 hours on foot to his accommodation.
Jay’s phone last pinged somewhere in the mountainous region near the village of Masca, where Spanish police focused their active search before officially calling it off on June 30. His family and friends remain on the island and have continued to look for the missing Brit with the aid of a former British police detective, Mark Williams-Thomas, 54.
The former Met Police officer, who has probed a string of high-profile missing persons cases, shared an update on social media yesterday where he revealed that he had spoken to Ayub Qassim, 31 – one of the men Jay went back to the rental villa with. Following his conversation with Mr Qassim, Mark detailed fresh information about Jay’s final known moments.
Here, the Mirror takes a look at everything new we know about Jay’s morning hour-by-hour, from when he left the strip to when his phone died…
6am: Leaves strip
Jay was partying on the Playa de Las Americas strip in the early hours of Monday morning, before he left with two fellow partygoers – including Mr Qassim – in a rental car to travel back to their Airbnb near the remote village of Masca. Jay was last seen wearing a grey sports top with a light green strip on the shoulders and carrying a black bag.
Detective Mark previously confirmed the timings, saying: “We know that shortly before 6am on Monday, June 7, Jay left the area of Veronica Strip in Las Americas in a Seat Leon hire car with two males casually known to him.” The journey to the rental home would have taken around 45 minutes by car, and the trio stopped off for refreshments on the way.
One theory as to why Jay left with the duo is that he’d lost his hotel room keys. According to The Sun, Jay messaged Mr Qassim complaining about losing his key. However, his uncle Glen Duncan does not believe that would be enough to make Jay travel so far.
He told The Sun: “The fact he has come out and said all his mates have left him and he had nowhere to go, he was 10 minutes from his apartment in Los Cristianos. He’s not stupid. If he didn’t have a room key he could have gone to reception for a replacement.”
According to Mr Qassim, Jay went back to the Airbnb, Casa Abuela Tina, as his friends had left him and gone home early. The TV detective shared fresh details yesterday on his social media. He said: “[Qassim] said he was on the trip, Jay wanted to carry on partying and he said he had nowhere to stay, so he said he could come back to his.
“In the car, they played music and chatted before stopping to get a drink at a cafe just prior to entering the mountains. [Qassim] was driving, his friend was in the passenger seat, and Jay was in the back.”
7am: Arrives at Airbnb
“On arrival at the rental, his friend opened the door, went to the left and went straight to sleep. Jay walked in behind, followed by [Qassim]. They went upstairs,” Mark said.
Ayub told Jay “the sofa’s for you there” and handed him a towel, a blanket and told him to have a shower whenever he wanted. Detective Mark added: “Jay also asked for a cigarette and Ayub said ‘I’ve got some Camel cigarettes’, and put one on the side. Jay then asked for a charger, then went into Qassim’s friend’s room, while he was sleeping and took the charger.”
Around 7.30am, Jay posted his final picture on Snapchat, holding a cigarette outside the property. Half an hour later, he decided he wanted to leave the villa and return to his accommodation.
8am: Leaves Airbnb
At approximately 8am, Jay spoke to a local woman about the bus timetable. The lady, called Ofelia Medina Hernandez, told MailOnline that Jay had asked her about buses back to Los Cristianos outside the rental property. She explained to him that the next bus was in two hours time at 10am, but was unsure if he understood her.
“I held up my fingers on my hands to say 10am as he didn’t understand me then I went home briefly before driving up the mountain to Buenavista del Norte, but this time I saw him walking on the road out of the village,” she said. “It was no more than 10 or 15 minutes after I had spoken to him and he was about a kilometre from the house. I drove past him and that’s the last I saw him.”
Mr Qassim saw Jay speaking to the woman at the bus stop. He was awoken by the sound of the door buzzing and a man and woman gestured to him that he needed to move his car. Detective Mark explained yesterday: “Qassim gets into his car and starts to move it, and he looks in the rearview mirror and sees Jay talking to a woman. Jay had his trainers on, as if he was about to leave and told Qassim that the woman had said he could get a bus ‘every 10 minutes’.
“Qassim said to him ‘Mate, just chill out I’ll drop you off in town when I wake up properly’. Jay said ‘Nah, nah, nah, I’m hungry, I need some scran’. Qassim said he replied: ‘There’s no bus coming. This is my green door, if you need me’. He then shuts the door, Jay walks away and Qassim goes back to sleep. He then says he gets a call from a friend of Jay’s who says he’s in a ditch somewhere and has been cut by a cactus.”
Qassim previously spoke to MailOnline and said: “The only comment I have to make is that Jay came to the house alive, and he left the house alive.” He added: “I let the geezer stay at mine because he had nowhere else to go, his friends had all left him. I know Jay, through friends, I’m not going to bring someone back to mine if I don’t know them.”
8.50am: Phone dies
Jay called his friend, Lucy Mae Law, who travelled with him to the Canary Islands, around 8.15am. He rang her to tell her that he was walking back to their accommodation after missing the first bus of the day and was thirsty, tired, cut his leg on a cactus and only had one percent phone battery.
In an interview on July 18, Lucy said: “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. He’s ended up out in the middle of nowhere.
“Jay was obviously thinking he would be able to get home from there. But then 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. He rang me at about 8 o’clock morning saying his phone was on 1 percent. He said ‘I don’t know where I am, I need a drink and my phone is about to die’.”
The teenager’s phone died at around 8.50am, with his last known location registered in the remote Rural de Teno park. All traces of the apprentice bricklayer were then lost.
