‘We’re in the dark’ Jay Slater’s dad rages as he demands answers over men who partied with teen before he fled ‘in fear’
JAY Slater’s dad has questioned why his teenage son ended up at a remote Airbnb with “two grown men” hours before he vanished.
Warren Slater, 58, believes the investigation into his son’s whereabouts should focus on the holiday let in the village of Masca in Tenerife.
He said: “My only question is, and this is where you start the investigation from, why did two grown men take a young boy to a valley to a bed and breakfast? I can’t understand that.
“Why? Why? You need to ask them why and then start from there.”
This comes after a TV investigator helping the family revealed Jay left the £40-night Airbnb feeling “scared”.
Former detective Mark Williams-Thomas claims the lad did not want to return to the holiday let despite needing water and having little phone battery.
He told friends he “couldn’t do that” and that he was already 30 minutes walk away.
Dad Warren, who was today scouring a narrow ravine near to the village of Masca where Jay was last seen, said the police are not telling the family much about their investigation.
He added that he has become “frustrated” and “angry” that more hasn’t been done to find his son.
He said: ”I’ve gone past the sadness bit and I’m angry, if that makes any sense. I’m angry that nothing’s happened.”
The lack of info has prompted Warren to become a detective himself.
“The police here are doing their own investigations. They’re not really telling us anything, they’re not telling you lot anything, we’re in the dark,” he said.
“All I’m doing is a Colombo bit myself. I mean he might be on here, you never know, but as a dad I don’t want him to be.
“You just don’t disappear. He’s a young boy, he’s fit. He’s fitter than us all put together.
“He’s played football all his life, he’s fit as a flea. You just don’t disappear.
“If I left you here and then you just disappeared, do you not think police would be on my case?”
Warren said he won’t ever give up trying to find his missing son.
He was with Jay’s brother Zak and the teen’s uncle who both joined the desperate hunt 17 days since Jay vanished.
“We’ve basically been searching for two hours,” he said.
“We’ve been all the way down. We’ve walked as far as you can until it’s too dangerous.
“There’s dogs in those caves so if there’s dogs there, there must be people.”
JAY CLUES
Warren added that if the hunt for Jay had been back in the UK and called off, he would have been furious.
But he said he’s happy to leave the decision making to the experts here in Tenerife.
He said: ”They know best. Do you think they should be still searching?
“If it was in England I’d be making a stink, but we’re in a foreign country and we’ve just got to leave it to people who know best.
“Like we said, if he’s walked from the B&B at 9am, got here and gone all the way back, that’s an hour and a half, so that’s 10.30am.
“There’s cars at 10.30am isn’t there, so someone would have seen him.”
The men parked in a lay-by off the main road a couple of minutes drive past the main tourist viewpoint, before walking down a windy dirt track.
They split off and searched thick bushes and cacti in the 22C heat looking for any clue of Jay, three days after police halted the official search.
“This is where his phone last pinged,” said Warren, pointing to an area.
“This was the valley and I’ve come to the point of no return.
“If I had mountain boots on and some ropes I would go for it, but I can’t do it in Adidas sandals.”
Pointing to a large mountain peak in the distance, he said: “If someone told me ‘he’s up that hill and you’ll find him’, I’d climb that f****** hill and find him.
“It’s just ridiculous that somebody can just disappear.”
Asked if he thinks Jay may have been heading towards the sea, which was visible in the distance, he said: “Maybe”.
He added: “It’s not that much of an area, surely. They’ve got the resources, surely they’ve scoured it.
“We followed the path all the way down the valley.”
MYSTERY DISAPPEARANCE
Warren, who had suffered cuts to his arm and leg during the search, said he often went hiking with Jay as a child.
“I’ve took him on many a trail when he was a kid up where we live,” he said.
“He doesn’t know this area, but when he was a kid I’ve taken him up Pendle Hill.”
It comes as a private investigator revealed Jay “stole a Rolex” before he vanished and the first picture of the man who rented the Airbnb where he spent his last night was revealed.
Jay, 19, is claimed to have admitted swiping the valuable timepiece in a Snapchat to pals after leaving a club in the early hours of June 17.
Today, ex-detective Mark Williams-Thomas made extraordinary claims about Jay in an eight-minute video.
He said the apprentice bricklayer, from Lancashire, posted a Snapchat the night before he vanished saying he had taken a Rolex worth £12,000 from an unknown person.
According to Mark – who worked on the Madeleine McCann case – the teen shared the post with pals while in a hire car.
Speaking about criticism the family have recieved over wanting to withdraw part of the GoFundMe donations, which have now reached nearly £50,000, he said: “We just want to pay for our hotel, we don’t want to do anything.”
The GoFundMe is being used to fund volunteer sleuths including Brit amateur climber Paul Arnott.
Asked if he will stay for as long as it takes, he said: “I know his mum wants to, maybe his brother wants to, but you can’t stay forever.
“His mum is saying ‘he’s not been found, I’m not leaving this island’.
“But it’s hard, it’s so f*****g hard.
“There’s not a straight line to follow.
“The police have said this is his last location. I don’t know… it’s just a mystery… it’s baffling.”