Jay Slater: Four unanswered questions as body found in Tenerife after huge police search

A body has been found in the area where Jay Slater went missing during the morning of June 17, Spanish police have confirmed.

In the statement, the force said “everything is pointing to the body being that of” the 19-year-old from Lancashire, who disappeared last month sparking a huge manhunt.

Jay’s distraught family, who kept looking for the apprentice bricklayer even after the Spanish police ended the official search for the teen on June 30, issued a statement via overseas missing persons charity LBT Global, which said formal identification still needed to be carried out but the body “was found with Mr Slater’s possessions and clothes”. 

The message added: “LBT Global are supporting the family at this distressing time and ask for everyone to afford them space and privacy to come to terms with the news.”

The disappearance of Jay remains shrouded in mystery, with several questions still unanswered.

Jay was partying with his friends at the Papagayo club in southwestern Tenerife on the night between June 16 and 17 when he decided to leave with two British men.

The teenager travelled to the men’s holiday rental located near the village of Masca, around an hour from his accommodation in Los Cristianos.

One of the two men, Ayub Qassim, previously said in an interview with the MailOnline that he let Jay stay at his place “because he had nowhere else to go, his friends had all left him”.

He added: “I know Jay, through friends, I’m not going to bring someone back to mine if I don’t know them.”

Former British detective Mark Williams-Thomas, who carried out his own investigation into the disappearance of Jay, also spoke to the man. In a video he shared on X on July 7, the TV detective claims he was told by Qassim: “He said he was on the strip, Jay wanted to carry on partying and he said he had nowhere to stay so, he said, he could come back to his.”

On the morning of June 17, after leaving the Airbnb rented by the two British men, Jay reportedly spoke to a cafe owner in Masca, who told him a bus that could take him back to Los Cristianos was due at 10am. The cafe owner went on to claim Jay set off walking and she later drove past him “walking quickly”.

It would have taken Jay some 11 hours to walk back to where his accommodation and friends were.

After he had already set off, Jay called his friend Lucy to tell her he was returning by foot, had cut himself with a cactus, missed a bus, was without water and only had one percent battery left on his phone.

It is not clear if the teenager ever tried to return to the bus stop before he went missing and what made him choose to try and tackle a treacherous and remote area rather than call for a taxi or wait for public transport in the village.

The human remains found in the Masca area will need to undergo a post-mortem examination before the body can be officially identified.

In a statement, Spanish police said “all indications” suggest the body found “could be the young British man who has been missing since June 17”.

Shedding light on what may have happened to the body found in the Masca area, the force added: “The first investigations reveal that he could have suffered an accident/fall in the inaccessible area where he was found.” 

Spanish police ended the search for Jay on June 30, although they continued to investigate his disappearance.

In a statement released on July 13 on the GoFundMe page set up by his friend Lucy, Jay’s mum Debbie Duncan said her family had been “actively working” with search and rescue teams and that a “team of experts” was flying in on the weekend from the Netherlands to “carry on the search with their specialist dogs”.

Ms Duncan added: “We are only able to fund this with the generosity of all those who donated. The team are the Signi Zoekhondon and this has taken lots of planning to get them over so thank you so much for your kindness.”

It is not known whether the team will carry out any work in the Masca area over the next few days.