The search for missing British teenager Jay Slater has been called off nearly two weeks after he disappeared in a remote part of Tenerife in the Canary Islands. ALSO READ: Week-long search for missing teenager Jay Slater in Tenerife continues.
Spanish police said the hunt for the 19-year-old from Lancashire had ended with the ‘case remaining open’.
‘The search operation is over. Yesterday was the final day of the search,’ Tenerife’s Guardia Civil police told the BBC. Police said they were ‘keeping the investigation open’ and could yet open up other searches in the south of the island, but did not provide any further update.
Slater vanished nearly two weeks ago near Buenavista del Norte, Tenerife, after travelling there with two men he had met at a festival around 27 miles further south on the island.
Since the teenager disappeared, the Spanish authorities have deployed helicopter crews, specially trained search dogs and drones.
Police carried out a new search on Saturday with the help of trained emergency workers near the village of Masca, in the Rural de Teno national park. The search was intended to be more extensive, after a call was put out for help from volunteers from the public, especially those with mountain experience.
The teenager’s father Warren Slater said on Saturday, however, that he was ‘disappointed’ that just six volunteers turned out to join the search for his son after police issued their appeal for help. Reports showed that around 12 members of the public had arrived at the meeting point shortly before it began.
Together with trained emergency workers, there was a total group of 30 to 40 people scouring a huge area of rugged and hilly terrain during Saturday. By Sunday morning, however, there were no emergency vehicles or personnel to be seen in Masca.
The apprentice bricklayer, from Oswaldtwistle, had been attending the NRG music festival on 16 June, and his friends said they were out in the tourist hotspot of Playa de las Americas when he was seen getting into a car with two British men he met earlier in the night.
The next morning, 17 June, he was tagged in a photo posted on Snapchat at an Airbnb in Masca, which was reportedly being rented by the two men.
Investigators have spoken to the pair and have said they are ‘not in any way relevant to the case’. According to reports, the two men have since returned to the UK.
Slater was last heard from before 9am in the Rural de Teno Park, where he called a friend to say he had missed the bus and was trying to make the 10-hour walk back to their accommodation in the south of the island.
Best friend Brad Hargreaves told ITV he received a video call from Slater in which he appeared to be sliding off a designated path, with the call showing his feet on rough ground.
Hargreaves told ITV News last week: ‘I don’t know how or what has gone on there but he’s gone off and rang me halfway to their house saying I’m staying here and I’ll be back the next day.’
‘He’s rang me walking down the mountain and he just says he’s walking home,’ he said. ‘At the time I didn’t think anything of it I just thought he was going to get a bus home or a taxi home because that’s what he says he is going to do.’
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