One of Jay Slater’s closest friends has revealed details of a phone call which took place shortly before he disappeared in the mountains of Tenerife.
An emotional Brad Hargreaves said that he heard the teenager sliding on gravel and that he had encouraged him to order a taxi, after they realised he had travelled miles away from their accommodation.
The duo had attended the New Rave Generation festival in Papagayo’s nightclub in the southern tourist hotspot of Playa de Las Americas, with Mr Slater returning to an AirBnb with two older men in in the small village of Masca.
Speaking to Good Morning Britain, Mr Hargreaves said that he could also hear Mr Slater’s feet sliding on the rocks, signalling to him his friend “went off the road... That’s how I knew he went off the road because, you know when you walk on gravel, or whatever it is, you can... you know what I mean, stones.
“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 you back, I’ll ring you back’ because I think someone else was ringing him.
“If he was thinking like me, he would have gone back up and started walking on the path again… He wouldn’t have gone all that way down there.”
Mr Hargreaves added: “Yeah, that’s how I knew he went off the road because I could hear like when you walk on gravel… stones.”
When probed if he was concerned at his point, he responded: “Not at the time because we were both laughing and he said, ‘Look where I am’ and I was like, ‘I’ve just come out of a festival’ and he didn’t seem concerned on the phone until we knew how far away he was.
“I said: ‘Put your location on and he said ‘a 15 minute drive or a 14 hour walk, I don’t know if it’s accurate or not’ and I said, ‘If it’s only a 15 minute drive, get a taxi’.”
At around 8.50am, Mr Slater called his other friend Lucy Law to say that he was lost, dehydrated, and only had one per cent phone battery. He was reported missing a short while later, with Spanish police and mountain rescue teams scouring the mountainside and ravines in the hope of finding him.
On Friday, the Guardia Civil issued an appeal for volunteers to gather at 9am on Saturday near the Mirador La Cruz de Hilda cafe to help with the search.
