Brit cops STILL can’t join search for missing Jay Slater despite dad Warren’s heartbreaking plea for help in Tenerife
BRITISH police are unable to help the family of Jay Slater as they lead a desperate search for the missing teen in Tenerife.
Jay’s devastated dad Warren Slater made an urgent plea to Brit cops and Interpol yesterday for help in tracking down his missing son.
The 19-year-old apprentice bricklayer from Oswaldthistle, Lancashire, disappeared on the holiday island on June 17.
After police, firefighters, volunteers and mountain rescue spent a fortnight looking for him, they axed the active search.
Now his distraught loved ones, who flew out to Tenerife the week he vanished, are retracing his last known steps.
Lancashire police confirmed to The Sun today that their position has not changed and they will not be going out to aid in the search.
They previously offered to fly out and help find missing teen Jay – but were shot down by local authorities in Tenerife.
Without an invitation from Spanish police they are unable to jet out, The Sun understands.
Warren warned yesterday it would take “an army 10 years” to search the vast mountainous area where Jay was last located.
Speaking to The Sun he said: “As a family, we need to ask the British authorities to help. He’s a British citizen. Get Interpol involved.
“At the moment, it’s just us. I haven’t got a team.
“We need a team to come over here and find out for us what the police are doing and what we need to do.
“Our hands are tied over here – we need experts. It’ll take an army 10 years to cover all this.”
Officials on the island weeks ago told Lancs cops they had the “resources” required to carry out the search alone, but the Brits said their offer remained “open”.
A statement from Lancashire police at the time read: “Whilst this case falls outside the jurisdiction of UK policing, we have made an offer of support to the Guardia Civil to see if they need any additional resources.
“They have confirmed that at this time they are satisfied that they have the resources they need, but that offer remains open and they will contact us should that position change.”
Jay’s friend Lucy Law, who flew out with him to the island, also pleaded with Brit police to go out and help.
Days after Tenerife police rejected the offer from Lancs cops, they called off the search.
It was the “nightmare scenario” Jay’s family were “dreading”, a source close to them revealed.
Warren has also called on Brit cops to interview Ayub Qassim, 31 – a convicted drug dealer who was among the last people to see Jay before he vanished.
Jay headed back to an Airbnb rented by Qassim, also known as ‘Johnny Vegas’, with him and a second unnamed man.
Qassim, who The Sun revealed was jailed for nine years in 2015, previously insisted: “Jay came to the house alive, and he left the house alive.”
The convicted criminal has hit out at speculation over his involvement in the mystery case and insists he has “nothing to hide”.
Qassim, who booked the Airbnb under the surname Abdul, and his friend spoke to Spanish police after Jay vanished.
Officials deemed them “irrelevant” to the ongoing investigation and let them fly home to the UK the very next day.
There have been mounting calls for police to speak to them again amid the ongoing mystery of Jay’s disappearance.
THE MYSTERIOUS CASE OF JAY SLATER
By Ellie Doughty, Foreign News Reporter
Monday July 8 marks three weeks since Jay Slater, a 19-year-old from Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire, vanished in Tenerife.
The apprentice bricklayer, who flew out to the popular holiday island for a rave festival with friends Lucy Law and Brad Page, has made headlines around the country.
On Sunday June 16 the three of them headed off to one of the events at Papagayo nightclub.
In the early hours of Monday 17 – Lucy and Brad were ready to head back to their hotel, but Jay wanted to keep partying.
It was then that he left the south of the island and headed to an Airbnb in the northwest with two British men.
The Sun revealed the identity of one of them – convicted drug dealer Ayub Qassim, who spent nine years behind bars in the UK.
For days it was thought that the second mystery man went by the name ‘Johnny Vegas’.
On Sunday former detective Mark Williams-Thomas, who is out in Tenerife investigating, said Qassim told him he is in fact the man behind the nickname ‘Johnny Vegas’.
We don’t yet know the identity of the second man – who remains a key part of the puzzle in Jay’s mysterious disappearance.
Qassim claims he drove Jay and the friend back to their accommodation and said they all went to sleep.
In the morning he offered to drive the teen back to the Los Cristianos resort after a nap, but Jay, hungry and tired, said he wanted to leave immediately.
Lucy, the last person to speak to Jay, claims she had a panicked call from him soon after he left the holiday let, telling her he was lost and thirsty, his phone was about to die and that he’d been cut by a cactus.
Jay had been seen by the owner of the Airbnb that morning wandering around near the Rural de Teno park – a mountainous region close-by.
He is believed to have been attempting the 11-hour trek back to his hotel, despite the alleged offer of a lift and more buses scheduled for the day.
It was there that his phone last pinged – and he hasn’t been seen or heard from since.
Mark Williams-Thomas has claimed he left the Airbnb quickly, and was “scared”.
Bizarrely, Qassim says he was woken up that morning by a phone call from an unnamed friend of Jay, saying he was “in a ditch” somewhere and had been “cut by a cactus”.
Jay’s friend Lucy claimed to have “tracked down” the two men in the Airbnb after he vanished – quizzing them on the morning of Jay’s disappearance.
Some reports have suggested Lucy knew the two men, although it is not clear how.
She has dubbed his disappearance “weird and suspicious”.
Both men were questioned by Spanish cops on June 17 but quickly deemed “irrelevant” to the investigation and cleared to fly back to the UK.
Police spent almost two weeks searching for Jay in the Tenerife mountains, scouring a 2,000ft ravine, before calling it off on Sunday June 30.
Jay’s family have repeatedly slammed the Spanish investigation into his bizarre disappearance.
His uncle, Glen Duncan, is convinced of “third party involvement”.
And the teen’s devastated dad, Warren Slater, says “everything stinks”
He told The Sun: “My starting position, I’ve said this from day one, ask the two men who’ve taken him – and then start from there.”
A number of unanswered questions remain, over why Jay would have travelled so far with two older men he didn’t know, why said men would have taken him in, and why he braved the Tenerife mountains with no phone battery, water or heat protection for a day-long walk.
