New information has emerged about Jay Slater’s final hours before his disappearance.
Yesterday marks two weeks since the 19-year-old was reported missing by his friends while vacationing on the Spanish island of Tenerife.
On June 16, Jay attended an event as part of the NRG Music Festival at the Playa de las Americas resort. He was accompanied by his friends, Lucy Mae Law and Brad Hargreaves.
While Lucy Mae and Brad returned to their accommodation, it was previously reported that Jay decided to stay out with two British men he had met that evening. It has now been revealed that Jay returned to an Airbnb later that night with the two men, and new details about their relationship have come to light.
Award-winning UK journalist Isla Traquair has been in Tenerife covering the story for ITV. She has conducted several interviews, including with Jay’s best friend, Brad. After receiving numerous comments from trolls on social media, Traquair took to Instagram on Sunday (June 30) to clarify some previously unknown details she had learned from speaking to Jay’s loved ones.
It was widely believed that the two men Jay spent the evening with were strangers to the 19-year-old. However, Traquair explains: “Also, importantly, the two men that [Jay] had went to stay with, they had met them three days before. They’d hung out with them. They’d made friends on holiday. It wasn’t two random people he’s met that night. They’d established a friendship and Brad said they seemed like really cool guys. Jay was just not ready for his night to end. We’ve all been there – where other friends want to go to bed, ‘hey, let’s have one more drink.’”
Previously, it was reported that Jay took a car ride with the men back to their Airbnb in the early hours of June 17. The property is located around 19 miles away from the beach club in the village of Masca, within the mountainous Rural de Teno national park.
The revelation that Jay had already met the two men two days prior has sparked confusion, as Lucy Mae had previously told the MailOnline: “I just don’t understand why he went to their place. He’d only just met them and didn’t know them at all. Brad [a mutual friend] and I said to come back but he didn’t, if he had this wouldn’t have happened.”
At around 7:30 AM on June 17, Jay shared a photo on Snapchat showing him holding a cigarette outside of the Airbnb, highlighted by its distinctive steps. The photo sparked confusion as many people couldn’t figure out what the colourful fabric was that Jay appeared to be wearing.
It was initially reported that Jay had been wearing a grey and green t-shirt like the one in the image above. He was also seen wearing this t-shirt in TikTok videos from the NRG music festival. Traquair has now clarified that Jay actually had a colourful blanket wrapped around him in his last Snapchat. She said: “Now we know – and this is from his friend Brad who had a phone call with him and he actually showed him – it was the blanket, [the two men] had made up a bed for him in this Airbnb that he was sleeping in.”
Traquair also shared details from Brad’s comments about their final video call. Brad revealed that the two friends shared a Snapchat video call after Jay decided to leave the Airbnb and head back to their shared accommodation. “[Jay] was on the phone walking down a road and he’d gone over a little bit – not a big drop – but a tiny little drop and he was going down, and he said ‘I’ll ring ya back, I’ll ring ya back’ because I think someone else was ringing him,” Brad told ITV’s Traquair. “If he was thinking like me, he would have gone back up and started walking on the path again.”
Discussing the roads in the area, Traquair said in her video: “When [Jay] was out walking, he steps over — there’s big stones, painted stones, that border the mountain road. It is an extremely dangerous mountain road. [Jay] is seen by his friend [Brad] stepping over these white stones. And that’s when he starts going downhill,” she added. Brad told Traquair in their television interview: “That’s how I knew he went off the road because, you know when you walk on gravel, or whatever it is, you can… you know what I mean, stones.”
At the time, neither of the teens were overly concerned as Jay assured Brad that he was okay. Brad added: “We were both, like, laughing about it. He said: ‘look where I am,’” he said.
However, Brad did ask Jay to turn on his location. Their phone call was around 8:30-8:40 AM on June 17. Jay was reported missing less than an hour after their conversation. Trying to make sense of what Jay was trying to achieve, Traquair believes Jay was attempting to cut down the mountain after initially heading up.
On Sunday, June 30, Spanish authorities announced that they have now stopped the search for Jay Slater in the Masca area, but have kept the investigation open.
