What happened to missing British tourist Jay Slater?

On June 17, a 19-year-old apprentice British bricklayer Jay Slater went missing in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain.

The young adult was attending the NRG (New Rave Generation) Music Festival at Papagayo Beach Club in south Tenerife on June 16. But he had never returned from the event to his rented apartment in Los Cristianos, a village on the south coast of Tenerife.

On July 15, the local police found a body, which is believed to be that of Jay Slater. Formal identification may have already taken place, but the results weren’t shared with the public yet out of respect for Slater’s family. Here’s exactly what happened to the 19-year-old.

How and when did Jay Slater go missing?

Jay Slater was from Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire, a town with a population of around 10,000 in northwestern England. After the festival, on the afternoon of June 16, 2024, Slater accompanied two men he met at the event, Ayub Qassim and an unnamed man, to the mountain village named Masca. It’s located in the northern part of Tenerife and is said to be a 40-minute drive to Los Cristianos, where Slater had stayed until then.

Local police forces deemed both men innocent in terms of Slater’s disappearance, according to Daily Mail. Additionally, Qassim offered to give Slater a lift back to Los Cristianos when they both woke up as the two talked shortly after arriving in an Airbnb in Masca. However, a local woman who asked Qassim to move his car told Slater the buses are “every 10 minutes.” Qassim questioned that and told Slater there weren’t any, but Slater decided to leave the apartment and try going back on his own.

Ofelia Medina Hernandez, whose brother is the owner of the Airbnb, said she talked with Slater around 8 am local time. She supposedly told him the time of the buses, with the closest one being at 10 am. The 19-year-old decided to walk either way. “He walked along the road when I saw him for the last time, up there … He was there alone. He was walking normally, though fast, a little fast,” Hernandez said, according to The Guardian.

Almost an hour later, around 08:50 am, Slater called Lucy Mae Law, one of his closest friends, when he tried to walk back to Los Cristianos from Masca, which is a distance of around 45 kilometers (28 miles), around an 11-hour walk. Lucy claimed Slater told her he needed water and had around one percent battery in his phone. This makes sense since Qassim said Slater was looking for a phone charger when they entered the Airbnb, according to Daily Mail.

Jay also video-called another friend, Brad Hargreaves, around the same time. His last known location was the Rural de Teno National Park in northern Tenerife, and after 9am, Slater was reported missing.

What was the response to Slater’s disappearance?

A day later, after the 19-year-old was reported missing and was nowhere to be found, Slater’s mother, Debbie Duncan, flew to Tenerife. His father and brother joined shortly after. Duncan had been working with LBT Global, a British charity that looks for missing people overseas.

“We cannot put into words the heartache we are suffering as a family. He is loved by everyone and has a close bond with his family and many, many friends,” Duncan said in LBT Global’s statement, a few weeks after Slater’s disappearance, via The Guardian.

On June 21, Lancashire Constabulary released a statement explaining that the family is being supported by specialist officers and that they wanted to aid Spain’s Guardia Civil in the search.

A day later, on June 22, the NRG Music Festival released a statement. The organizers thanked everyone for attending their event in Tenerife last weekend and continued supporting everyone who has been engaged in the search for Jay.

Guardia Civil police and rescuers continued to search for Slater in a ravine in the Teno Nature Reserve, where the 19-year-old went missing. On June 25, the officials stumbled across another missing person in a ravine nearby where Slater had been last seen. It was a 51-year-old Scottish hiker who also failed to return from a hike and was therefore reported missing. Local officers claimed the hiker wouldn’t have been able to get out of the ravine “by his own means,” due to the “difficulty and lack of communication,” according to Sky News.

The whole situation and search sparked an immense movement in social media. A few fundraisers were made to support Slater’s family.

Was the body of Jay Slater eventually found?

On July 15, the Spanish police force claimed to have found a lifeless human body close to the latest known location of the 19-year-old.

“Guardia Civil agents belonging to Mountain Rescue and Intervention Group located in this morning the lifeless body of a young man in the Masca area, belonging to the municipality of Buenavista del Norte,” the official statement reads, according to the Guardian. Additionally, it pointed out how the person could have died only due to a fall, suggesting that was what happened to Slater.

As of July 16, the body will undergo autopsy and formal identification. The results of both remain unknown at the time of writing, though, many believe it is indeed Slater. It looks “to be that of Jay Slater,” LBT Global said, via Sky News. “All indications indicate that it could be the young British man who has been missing since June 17 – in the absence of full identification,” local forces added. More importantly, the body was found alongside Slater’s possessions and clothes.