A British teenager has been reported missing after attending a techno festival in Tenerife last weekend.
19-year-old Jay Slater, from Oswaldtwistle in Lancashire, was on the Canary island with friends attending the NRG music festival in the tourist hotspot of Playa de las Americas.
According to the BBC’s report, Slater left the area on the Sunday night of the festival (16th June), after telling a friend that he was going to stay with people he had met on a night out, in the north-west of the island.
The following morning (Monday, 17th June), the friend received a call from Slater shortly before 09:00 BST, explaining that he had missed a bus back to their accommodation and was attempting to walk the 10-hour journey. He also said that he needed water and had only 1% battery life left on his phone.
The call then cut out, with Slater’s last location showing a path in the mountainous Rural de Teno national park on the north-west of the island. Slater has not been seen or heard from since.
The last known video taken of the teenager shows him dancing at the Papagayo nightclub on Sunday night, where he was making his way through a crowd.
A huge search has been ongoing in the days since the teenager’s disappearance, led by a specialist mountain rescue team deployed by the local police. Jay’s mother Debbie Duncan and eldest brother Zak Slater flew to the island on Tuesday (18th June) to join the search.
After discounting a potential lead in the south of the island, the operation refocused their efforts on Thursday (20th June) on an area near the village of Masca, close to where Slater was last seen.
Volunteer firefighters and Civil Protection workers, employing drones, have also been facilitating the search, scheduled to persist today (Friday, 21st June) and extend into the weekend if required. Jay was last seen wearing a white T-shirt with shorts and trainers and a black bag.
Speaking to the BBC, Slater’s mother Debbie Duncan said she was growing increasingly desperate.
“He’s just an all-round nice, bubbly guy with hundreds of friends who love being in his company,” she said. “He’s gorgeous, he’s beautiful. He’s my baby.”
She added that Slater had been reluctant to travel to Tenerife for the festival. “It was his first holiday abroad with his friends and I was encouraging him to go, I said, ‘You will have a great time’.”
Callum Thorpe, a close friend of Slater since primary school, told the BBC that he assumed Slater had simply “been to an afterparty” and not turned up. However, he said that as time has gone by, it had “got more serious and it's getting a bit scary now”.
Friends, family members, and people from the local community in Oswaldtwistle have been placing blue ribbons on buildings in support of Jay Slater and his family. A prayer service was held on Thursday night at West End Methodist Church in the town.
Slater’s friend Lucy has now also set up a Go Fund Me page to raise funds to pay for his family and friends to stay in Tenerife to assist the search.
A spokesperson for the Foreign Office told the BBC: “We are supporting the family of a British man who has been reported missing in Spain and are in contact with the local authorities.”
The three-day New Rave Generation (NRG) festival ran from 14th-16th June in southern Tenerife, and saw performances from horsegiirL, 999999999, Patrick Mason, Hannah Laing, and more.
NRG has since shared a missing person alert for Jay Slater via Instagram stories, both in Spanish and English. The alert, which features a photo of the teenager, reads as follows: “We share your concern for Jay Slater from Lancashire who was on the island for NRG Tenerife this weekend and has been reported missing. He was last heard from by friends at around 8:50am on Monday 17th June, when he is believed to have been near the village of Masca.”
“Anyone who may be able to help and is in Tenerife should contact the emergency services on 062 or 112.”
Read the full BBC report here.