JAY SLATER’S father said he thinks his son may have been heading towards the sea in Tenerife when he went missing on June 17.
Warren Slater, 58, has been personally searching the mountains of northwest Tenerife since police called off the active search last Sunday.
Jay’s last known location was in Teno Rural park, near a 2,000-foot ravine with a steep drop into the sea surrounding the holiday island.
A huge search team made up of police, volunteers, firefighters, drones, helicopters and sniffer dogs spent two weeks scouring the sparse nearby park.
On Sunday, June 30, local authorities halted the mammoth hunt, leaving Jay’s “angry” family to fend for themselves.
When asked if his son Jay might have been heading toward the sea the morning he disappeared, Warren said Manchester Evening News “Perhaps”.
He said: “I’ve done this trail twice. Every step I took there was an opening.
“If you land on one of those cacti, you won’t move. Surely someone will find it after two weeks.”
“It’s hundreds of square feet of this thick little thing. You can’t explain it to someone unless they see it. You can take a photograph or film it, but until you get here…”
Warren told MEN he went from sadness to anger at the police response to Jay’s disappearance.
He said: “I’m past sadness and I’m angry, if that makes any sense.
“I’m angry because nothing happened. If I left you here and you just disappeared, don’t you think the police would be on my case?”
Apprentice bricklayer Jay, from Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire, was last heard from on the morning of June 17 when he phoned a friend to say he was “lost in the middle of nowhere”.
He returned to a remote Airbnb with two British men in the northwest of the island in the early hours before leaving that morning.
After missing the bus, he began the 11-hour journey back to his accommodation and disappeared into the rural mountains of the northwest.
On Monday, Jay’s parents pleaded with officers not to give up the hunt for their son during a difficult meeting.
Detectives promised to investigate any new reports or information that came in, but remained steadfast in stopping the active search.
A source close to the family revealed that the decision to call off the search was the “nightmare scenario” that Jay’s family “feared.”
Jay’s worried loved ones yesterday lashed out at a TikTok creator who flew in to join the search but dropped out after claiming he “never received any money” from the GoFundMe.
Callum Fahim, who voluntarily traveled to Tenerife to help police, said he left after receiving death threats and not seeing any money.
He flew out after contacting the 19-year-old’s mother, Debbie Duncan, online, according to Sky News.
But Fahim has already shared plans to return to the UK on Thursday.
The Slater family claim Debbie gave Callum £740 of her own money to fund his accommodation.
She says the TikToker was “bitter” after they refused to give her more money.
Several search experts and a former detective said the teenager could be alive somewhere in the mountains.
Army reservist and searcher Juan García believes police called off the search for the missing Jay too early and warned earlier that he might be feeding on plants and rainwater to stay alive.
Former detective Hedges told The Sun: “It’s certainly possible. I think it’s important to let the investigation keep all lines of inquiry open until it is proven that they are not viable.
“That’s a long time to survive without food. It depends on the amount of rain and whether there is enough water.
“But we should certainly always consider that possibility.”
This story originally appeared on The-sun.com read the full story