A close friend of missing teen Jay Slater has claimed that the two men he was last seen with in Tenerife were not strangers.
The 19-year-old apprentice bricklayer from Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire, vanished on Monday, June 17, after leaving a music festival with two unidentified British men. They had all returned to an Airbnb located near the remote and “treacherous” Masca village.
Journalist Isla Traquair, who spoke to Jay’s best mate Bradley Hargreaves, disclosed that the trio had become friends three days before Jay’s mysterious disappearance. She said: “It wasn’t two random people he’d met that night. They’d established a friendship and Brad said they seemed like really cool guys.”
Traquair further explained that Jay decided to return to the Airbnb with the men because he “was just not ready for his night to end”. However, he did communicate to his friends, via phone calls or texts, saying ‘oh, these guys have just gone to bed, maybe I’ll just come back.’
The two men, whose identities remain undisclosed, reportedly flew back to the UK after being briefly questioned by Tenerife police. Officers later told Sky News that the men were “not relevant” to the search.
Jay’s other friend, Lucy Mae Law, who was with him and Brad on the trip, managed to locate the men at their Airbnb before they departed, using clues from Jay’s Snapchat posts that disclosed his whereabouts, reports the Mirror.
She said: “They seemed startled and surprised that I had found them, and I asked them where Jay was. They said he had gone out to try and look for cigarettes and then come back and said he was leaving to try and get a bus back into town.
“They just seemed shocked that I had managed to find them and I know the police have spoken to them but I’ve since found out they have left the country. They need to be spoken to properly.
After more than two weeks without any new leads or sightings of 19-year-old Jay in Tenerife, Spanish authorities declared on Sunday that they would be ceasing their search efforts. The news has reportedly left Jay’s family and friends “devastated” and “heartbroken”. Rachel Hargreaves, mother of Brad Hargreaves and a close friend of Jay’s mum Debbie Duncan, aged 55, stated firmly: “Nothing has changed.
We’re still going to go out and search. No one is leaving until we find Jay. We stay, we do what we need to.”
Meanwhile, former British detective Mark Williams-Thomas, who joined Jay’s family in Tenerife to assist in the search, suggested that the family use the £47,000 raised through GoFundMe to finance a private search after Spanish authorities ceased their efforts to locate the missing British teenager.