Laurence Dollimore
THE mother of missing British teenager Jay Slater has spoken for the first time after landing in Tenerife to help with the search.
Debbie Slater flew out to the Spanish island today, accompanied by her eldest son and Jay’s brother Zak.
It comes as local police continue their search in the Rural de Teno Park, near the mountain village of Masca on the north-west on the island.
The area is an 10-hour walk from where Jay, an apprentice bricklayer, was staying with Lucy Mae and another unnamed pal.
They travelled to Tenerife to attend the three-day ‘New Rave Generation’ (NRG) music festival.
Debbie said she was ‘beside myself with worry’, adding that she had flown out with her eldest son ‘to do anything we can to help’, reports MailOnline.
She continued: ‘We’re just praying the police or someone finds Jay. I know there’s a mountain rescue team out and a helicopter.
‘Nothing’s ever going to be enough when your youngest son’s gone missing but it sounds as if the police here are taking this very seriously and doing the best job they can…
‘He’d been at a three-day festival so he would have consumed a fair bit of alcohol but Jay was snapchatting with friends before he went missing and seemed very compos mentis.
‘I just think it was a question of him not knowing the island well enough because it was his first time here and being a bit disorientated when it came to distances and not realising it was a 10-hour walk from where he went missing to his holiday accommodation.’
She added that she thinks the police now have a ‘more precise location’ of where his phone pinged its last signal and that a helicopter was being used in the search.
Debbie’s partner of 11 years, Andy Watson, told Lancashire Live of the moment police knocked on the door of their quiet cul-de-sac home.
The 63-year-old said: “It was about 2.30am in the early hours… When the police said ‘the best thing you can do is get yourself out there’ we knew it was bad. This was his first holiday on his own. I’m just hoping he’s gone to another party.”
On Sunday night, Jay went home with people he had met on the trip, telling his friends he was staying at their apartment.
He left at around 8am on Monday, allegedly saying he was going to ‘catch a bus’.
He then called his pal Lucy at around 8.30am, saying he was walking and needed a drink of water.
But he only had 1% of battery left on his mobile and was trying to use his ‘maps’ app to self navigate.
Lucy told Manchester Evening News: “He’s gone on a night out, he’s gone to a friend’s house, someone that he has met on holiday.
“One of the people he has met has hired a car out of here, so he’s driven them back to his apartment and Jay has gone there not realising how far away it is.
“He’s ended up out in the middle of nowhere. Jay was obviously thinking he would be able to get home from there.
“But then in the morning he’s set off walking, using his Maps on his phone and ended up in the middle of mountains with nothing around.
“He rang me at about 8 o’clock in the morning saying his phone was on 1 per cent, he said ‘I don’t know where I am, I need a drink and my phone is about to die’.”
