Human remains have been found in the search for a British teen who went missing almost a month ago on the island of Tenerife, Spanish police say.
It was likely to be the body of Jay Slater, though formal identification has not been made, police said on Monday (early Tuesday AEST).
“The Mountain Rescue and Intervention Group of the Civil Guard has located the lifeless body of a young man in the Masca area after 29 days of constant search,” according to the statement.
“All indications indicate that it could be the young British man who has been missing since last June 17.”
LBT Global, a charity that supported Slater’s family, said the body was found with Slater’s clothing and possessions near the last location of his mobile phone.
Slater, 19, was last seen as he set out to walk from Masca, a village in the northwest of the Canary Island, to where he had been staying in Los Cristianos in the south.
It was a trip that would have taken about 11 hours on foot over rugged terrain.
Slater frantically called his friend, Lucy Law, that morning and said he was “lost in the mountains, he wasn’t aware of his surroundings, he desperately needed a drink and his phone was on 1 per cent”, she said.
Police said the body was found in a very remote area and that an autopsy will be performed “to confirm that the death was accidental.”
Slater, an apprentice bricklayer from Oswaldtwistle in north-west England, had attended a music festival the day before his disappearance.
