A spokesperson told The Sun that the investigation has not classified the 19-year-old British young man as “missing and presumed dead,” as reported by the aforementioned media outlet. Meanwhile, Jay’s father, Warren Slater, urged Interpol and British police to join the search for his son, while family members searched the Masca area, where he was reportedly seen nine hours after his last confirmed appearance.
The 58-year-old father urged British authorities to get involved after local agents suspended the search.
“As a family, we need to ask British authorities to help us. He is a British citizen. Get Interpol involved,” he stated in comments reported by The Daily Mail.
His last confirmed appearance was in Masca, shortly after 8 in the morning, leaving the village in northwest Tenerife. However, relatives were searching on Monday in the village of Santiago del Teide, where he was allegedly seen nine hours after his disappearance.
“At this moment, it’s just us. I don’t have a team. We need a team to come here and find out what the police are doing and what we need to do. Our hands are tied here; we need experts. It would take us 10 years to cover this entire area,” he pleads.
[–>The case has been riddled with various theories, some of which are quickly spreading on social media, many of which are “unverified and unfounded”.
Some investigators believe the 19-year-old young man could be alive somewhere else in Tenerife. The police will follow at least three important leads after a source close to the case told The Telegraph that the case remains “very much open” and “all scenarios are being taken into account”.
However, both the father and uncle of Jay have expressed doubts about the police investigation in recent days, as well as the possible involvement of criminal acts, while expressing their frustration at the lack of progress in the search.
[–>After the police found no trace of Jay, the official search was called off on June 30, after two weeks. His “heartbroken and frustrated family” vowed to continue the search on their own as they scoured the mountains themselves. A new team led by local hiker Juan García, including Jay’s uncle, father, and brother Zak, focused on a gorge area before exploring caves, ravines, and slopes. The search was hindered by the altitude, heat, and size of the area. Warren voiced similar concerns about the vast area they needed to cover.
Jay’s friends, Lucy and Brad, have returned to the UK. “It’s heartbreaking for the friends to have to fly home without Jay. But they can only stay in Tenerife for a limited time. They are returning home with mixed emotions. Part of them hopes never to see Tenerife again, but on the other hand, their dream is to return if Jay is found and be there to welcome him back and give him a hug,” said a source close to the case.
One of the most popular theories is that the young man had some issue with the men he stayed with after a night out in a holiday rental apartment in Masca. The case took a turn earlier this week when it was revealed that one of the last people to see Jay was a convicted drug dealer, popularly known as ‘Jonny Vegas’. “There has been no suggestion from any investigating authority that this man, identified as Ayub Qassim, is a suspect in any crime,” urge sources close to the case, reminding that he was investigated, questioned, and classified as “irrelevant”.
TV detective Mark Williams-Thomas, who flew to Tenerife to help find Jay, claimed on Sunday to have spoken with 31-year-old Qassim, who was imprisoned nine
Decades for orchestrating a plan to flood Wales with drugs. “He told me he was in the Las Verónicas area in Playa de las Américas and that Jay wanted to keep partying and had nowhere to stay, so he invited him to his apartment. In the car, they played music all the way, stopped once to buy a soft drink. He was travelling with another friend of Qassim.”
He also explained that said friend went to sleep but Jay asked for a blanket and a phone charger, although he didn’t plug it in, “as when he left he had no battery left”.
The next morning “he woke up to the sound of someone knocking on the door. A woman and a man told him to move his car, which he did and saw Jay chatting with another woman. After moving the vehicle, he returned and saw the young man wearing his sneakers and told Qassim that the woman had told him he could take a bus back to his apartment”. He offered to drive him but Jay declined.
The decision that has baffled everyone
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“The only comment I have to make is that Jay arrived at the house alive and left the house alive. I let the guy stay in my house because he had nowhere to go, his friends had left him. I know Jay, through friends, I’m not going to bring someone into my house if I don’t know him. I was helping him and now my face is all over the news. It’s a bit crazy. I haven’t done anything,” Ayub Qassim said earlier this week.
But the decision has raised concerns in his family, who question why the police allowed some of the last people to see him alive to return to the United Kingdom.
