A British man disappeared on the Spanish island of Tenerife on Monday morning, with his mother told to “kiss goodbye” to her son in a mysterious message.
Jay Slater, 19, vanished after calling his friend to say he was lost, thirsty and had just 1% battery on his phone, after leaving the NRG music festival a few hours before with two men he had met on the vacation.
When his friend checked his location on Snapchat, he was about a 10-hour walk away in the Rural de Teno national park – an area popular with hikers.
Search efforts so far have come up short, with the Spanish Guardia Civil using drones, search dogs and helicopters to look for him over the past few days.
Slater’s mother, Debbie Duncan, flew out to Tenerife to be close to the search.
“I got a Snapchat about ten minutes after I got off the plane saying ‘Kiss goodbye to your boy, you’re never going to see him again, he owes me a lot of money,'” Duncan told British news outlet Lancs Live. “Which I passed on to police with the number it came from because I had my wits about me at the time and got my eldest son Zac to take a screen grab before it disappeared.
“There’s been that many prank calls that I don’t know whether that was one but I’m passing on information to police that I think could be relevant and I thought that could be.”
The Spanish Guardia Civil reportedly moved their search to a different part of the island on Wednesday to follow a potential lead, but that was discounted, and efforts moved back to the national park.
The apprentice bricklayer, from Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire, was due to fly home to the UK Thursday, but his mother has his passport, left behind at the apartment complex in Los Cristianos where he had been staying.
“I just think he’s being held against his will,” Duncan said. “He’s not a stupid lad. He wouldn’t have gone walking down bloody mountains.
“There’s a road there with tourists and buses and properties, He’s not that daft.”
Duncan told the BBC that she had seen emergency services working tirelessly to find her son.
On Thursday morning, the volunteer firefighters association in Santiago del Teide, Tenerife, said it had sent four vehicles with 16 firefighters on board to work alongside local police, the mountain civil guard, as well as Slater’s family and friends.
Photos showed the teams in the mountainous area, searching the winding roads for the young man.
Newsweek reached out to the Guardia Civil for further comment Thursday morning via email.
A GoFundMe page, set up to aid in the search efforts, has so far raised around $22,600, while a Facebook page dedicated to finding him has gathered over 369,000 followers.
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