By Ellie Doughty, Foreign News Reporter
Monday 8th July marks three weeks since Jay Slater, a 19-year-old from Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire, went missing in Tenerife.
The apprentice bricklayer, who flew to the popular holiday island for a rave festival with friends Lucy Law and Brad Page, made headlines across the country.
On Sunday, June 16, the three left for one of the events at the Papagayo nightclub.
In the early hours of Monday the 17th – Lucy and Brad were ready to go back to the hotel, but Jay wanted to continue the party.
It was then that he left the south of the island and headed to an Airbnb in the northwest with two Brits.
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 was called ‘Johnny Vegas’.
On Sunday, former detective Mark Williams-Thomas, who is investigating in Tenerife, said Qassim told him he is in fact the man behind the nickname ‘Johnny Vegas’.
We still don’t know the identity of the second man – who remains a key part of the puzzle of Jay’s mysterious disappearance.
Qassim claims he took Jay and his friend back to the dorm and said everyone went to sleep.
In the morning, he offered to take the teenager 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 that she received a panicked call from him shortly after he left the holiday, saying that he was lost and thirsty, that his phone was about to die, and that he had been cut off by a cactus. .
Jay had been seen by the Airbnb owner that morning wandering near the Teno Rural park – a nearby mountainous region.
He is believed to have attempted the 11-hour walk back to his hotel, despite the supposed offer of a lift and more buses scheduled for the day.
It was there that his phone last rang – and he hasn’t been seen or heard from since.
Mark Williams-Thomas said he left Airbnb quickly and was “scared.”
Strangely, Qassim says he was woken up that morning by a phone call from Jay’s unidentified friend, saying he was “in a ditch” somewhere and had been “cut by a cactus.”
Jay’s friend Lucy claimed to have “located” the two men at the Airbnb after he disappeared – interrogating them on the morning of Jay’s disappearance.
Some reports suggest that Lucy knew both men, although it is unclear how.
She dubbed his disappearance “strange and suspicious.”
The two men were questioned by Spanish police officers on June 17, but were quickly deemed “irrelevant” to the investigation and allowed to fly back to the UK.
Police spent nearly two weeks searching for Jay in the mountains of Tenerife, searching a 2,000-foot ravine, before calling it off on Sunday, June 30.
Jay’s family has repeatedly criticized the Spanish investigation into his bizarre disappearance.
His uncle, Glen Duncan, is convinced of “third party involvement”.
And the teenager’s devastated father Warren Slater says ‘everything stinks’
He told The Sun: “My starting position, I said this from day one, ask the two men who took him – and then go from there.”
A number of unanswered questions remain, about why Jay would have traveled so far with two older men he did not know, why these men would have taken him in, and why he braved the mountains of Tenerife without a phone battery, water or protection. thermal. for a full day hike.
This story originally appeared on The-sun.com read the full story
