by Watc: Mother of missing teenager says search is ‘nightmare’
The mother of British teenager Jay Slater has said she fears her son has been “taken against his will” after receiving a Snapchat message saying: “Kiss your boyfriend goodbye.”
Slater, 19, went missing on Monday morning after attending a music festival in Tenerife.
Slater’s mother, Debbie Duncan, flew to Tenerife with her eldest son Zak and was joined by several other family members to help with the search.
As the third day of the search drew to a close, Duncan said: “There’s been no ransom demand yet but I got a Snapchat about 10 minutes after I got off the plane saying ‘goodbye boy, you’re never going. to see him again, he owes me a lot of money’, which I passed on to the police with the number he came from as my comments were about me at the time and my eldest son Zac got a screen grab to take before he left. .”
Duncan added: “It’s traumatic and it doesn’t feel real. It’s just terrible, it’s horrendous. I think he was taken against his will with what has been said, but he is in the hands of the police.”
Police have said they are keeping an “open mind” about the incident.
Here’s what we know, and don’t know, about Slater’s disappearance.
What we know
Slater, a 19-year-old apprentice bricklayer from Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire, traveled to Tenerife with friends – named in local media as Lucy and Brad – to attend the NRG Tenerife Weekender music festival.
It was Slater’s first holiday abroad without his parents. The festival, which featured “three days of madness featuring pool parties, boat parties, outdoor raves, nightclub takeovers and more”, ran from Friday to Sunday.
A friend of Slater’s, named Lucy, said he called her to say his phone was almost out of battery and told her: “I don’t know where I am, I need a drink and my phone is on to die.”
Lucy, speaking to the Manchester Evening News, said Slater decided to stay out on Sunday with other people he met at the festival while she and Brad went back to their accommodation. She said one of the group had rented a car and Slater was “in the middle of nowhere”.
His last known location was until now near the mountain village of Masca. Lucy suggested that this was an 11 hour walk from where she and Brad were staying and Slater didn’t realize how far it was. “He started walking, using his maps on his phone and ended up in the middle of the mountains with nothing around.”
Slater called Lucy just before 9am on Monday and said he had missed a bus back, needed water and only had 1% battery left on his phone. The phone went flat then. Its last location was shown as the Rural de Teno park – a mountainous area popular with tourists in north-west Tenerife.
Slater was last seen wearing a white T-shirt with shorts and trainers. He was also believed to be carrying a black bag.
Civil Guard [Spanish police] A spokesman said he was reported missing at 9.04am on Monday. Helicopters and a “mountain specialist team” have been mobilized as part of the search.
Debbie’s partner of 11 years, Andy Watson, described the moment police knocked on the door of their quiet cul-de-sac to tell them Jay was missing. Andy, 63, said: “It was about 2.30am early. When the police said: ‘The best thing you can do is get yourself out there’ we knew it was It’s bad. This was his first holiday alone. I hope he’s gone to another party.”
Slater’s mother, Debbie, arrived in Tenerife just before midday on Tuesday. She has since been joined by other family members.
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When he arrived, Mail Online quoted her as saying: “He had been at a festival for three days so he would have consumed some alcohol but Jay was Snapchatting with friends before he went missing and looked very compos mentis .
Andy Watson’s stepfather also told The Sun that he fears Slater may have taken a “wrong turn” while out walking back to his accommodation in Tenerife.
It has also emerged that Slater shared a Snapchat an hour before he went missing, which showed him having a cigarette in the accommodation he visited with two men at around 7.30am.
The UK Foreign Office has said it is supporting the Slater family and is in contact with the authorities on the island.
Mountain rescue teams and helicopters have been deployed in the search, and local residents living in Tenerife are distributing missing posters to put up around Adeje in the hope of finding him and bringing him home safely.
Rescuers returned to the original search site in Rural de Teno after a “false report” led them to an area on the other side of the island.
What we do not know
We don’t know what happened to Slater in the hours after his phone battery died, or his physical condition.
The scope of the authorities’ search is also unknown, although Slater’s mother has said police have told her they have a “more precise location” about his potential.
We also don’t know who Slater was staying with. Lucy told the Manchester Evening News that she had spoken to these people but gave no further information about them.
She said they told her Slater left their flat at around 8am yesterday to “catch a bus”.
We do not know what condition the teenager was in when he went missing. Mail Online quoted Slater’s mother as saying: “He had been at a festival for three days so he would have had some alcohol but Jay was Snapchatting with friends before he went missing and he looked very compos mentis.”
Although she fears her son has been taken against his will, we still don’t know how reliable the Snapchat message she received is, or whether it was a malicious prank.
Slater’s friend Lucy described her disappearance as “suspicious and strange”, but her fate remains speculation and officials have not commented on what they think may have happened to Slater, other than to say she was “open minded ” keeping them.
