Jay Slater search team in Tenerife provides major updates on hunt for missing Oswaldtwistle 19-year-old

Police in Tenerife have now confirmed the apprentice bricklayer was spotted on the morning he disappeared and the rescue effort was starting from that point today.

Officers also confirmed the two mystery men who invited him back to their Airbnb hours after he went missing have been identified and spoken to. 

However little is known about the men, who have not spoken publicly, besides the fact that they are British, black and in their late 30s to early 40s. 

Police have said they drove Jay back to their £40-a-night two-bedroom apartment, located just outside the village of Masca on the side of a mountain in the Rural de Teno national park, some 20 miles away.

Friends of Jay were sent a picture of him inside the car of the two men and this has been shared with investigating officers. 

Spanish police have now confirmed they have been questioned before been allowed to return to the UK to Luton Airport.

It is known that the two did not know Jay - but they are said to be associates of his friend Lucy Mae Law. 

But today Cipriano Martin, head of the Civil Guard's Greim mountain rescue unit, told reporters at the scene: “Those men have been spoken to and they don't have any relevance whatsoever for the case.”

But as the investigators ruled out the two men's use to finding out what happened to Jay, another possible lead involving a cactus could help them in their search.

Asked whether the only information they have to go on is the last place Jay's phone 'pinged' from, Mr Martin replied: “That's right. We can't come up with too many conjectures either. The clues are based on the information we have.

“Another of the things that leads us to consider that hypothesis is when he rings his friend Lucy and says he's cut himself on a cactus and he's worried because he doesn't know whether it's poisonous or not, and she tells him not to worry that it's not poisonous.

“But for that to happen you have to leave the road because you're not going to cut yourself on a cactus being on the road and he's had to go into the mountains obviously.

“Well, we've been searching for lots of days and with the search today, we're talking about 30 people.”

When asked if on the day Jay disappeared someone saw him he replied: “Yes, he was seen, the morning he disappeared, around 8.10am, he was seen very near the spot we're at now, heading up to the look-out point, and later his telephone places him here, and after that the phone location he shares places him here.” 

The 19-year-old, from Oswaldtwistle disappeared following an attempt to walk back to his accommodation on June 17.

The search in the village of Masca, near to his last-known location, is being co-ordinated to take in a steep rocky area, including ravines, trails and paths.

It marks the 13th day in the search.

Brigadier Cipriano Martin, chief of the Guardia Civil’s mountain rescue team, said Mr Slater would not have travelled to “any area we don’t go to”.

Speaking through a translator, he told the BBC: “There are difficult areas and we’ve given instructions for people not to risk their own safety.

“But there’s something we need to make clear, which is any area we don’t go to, well, Jay won’t have gone there either.

“You have to think about it logically – if I see there’s vegetation in front of me and I’m going to get spiked, and I can’t get through, then he won’t have gone through that area either.

“We have to be logical, obviously.”

Asked if the sea can be reached directly from the search area, he said: “You can reach the sea, in fact last Saturday I went along the whole path – there are old paths which are only occasionally used because it’s a cliff with very little attraction for sporting purposes.

“But you can reach the beach along them, so I reached the beach.

“We didn’t find anything. It’s a path that goes above and not along the bottom of the cliff, it has drops, and what’s needed are ropes to get down and we also know he was not equipped for that.

“There are rocky drops that you cannot get beyond, you can only get down with a harness and ropes – the people searching that spot today will have to turn around I think, because they don’t have the necessary equipment, and anyway the best that Jay could do was simply to walk.”

Mr Slater attended the NRG music festival on the island with two friends before his disappearance and his last known location was the Rural de Teno Park in the north of the island – which was about an 11-hour walk from his accommodation.

On Friday, Mr Slater’s friend Brad Hargreaves told ITV’s This Morning he had been on a video call with him before his disappearance when he heard him go off the road.

He said: “He 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.”

He confirmed he could see his friend’s feet “sliding” down the hill and could hear he was walking on gravel.

But, Mr Hargreaves said he and his friend were both laughing at that point.

He added: “He didn’t seem concerned on the phone until we knew how far away he was.”

He told the programme he still had hope for Mr Slater and was “praying” for him to come home.

Earlier this week, his mother Debbie Duncan, who travelled to the island following his disappearance, said money raised online would be used to support mountain rescue teams, and to cover her own accommodation and food costs.

Donations flooded in after GoFundMe appeal “Get Jay Slater home” was set up by Lucy Law, his friend and the last person to speak to him, and by Friday more than £40,000 had been raised.

Ms Duncan has described her son’s disappearance and the wait for news as a “living nightmare”.