Jay Slater’s friend Lucy Mae Law breaks silence and shares new photo of missing teenager 18 days after he vanished in Tenerife

JAY SLATER’S friend Lucy Mae Law has shared a new photo of the missing teenager 18 days after he vanished in Tenerife.

Taking to her Instagram for the first time in weeks, Lucy posted a snap of the couple together with a crying face emoji.

Lucy was the last person to speak to Jay on the morning of June 17 and has since gone looking for him in Tenerife.

The couple jetted off to the holiday island together and attended a rave at Papagayo nightclub on June 16 during the NRG music festival.

He disappeared the next morning in Teno Rural Park, a sparsely wooded area in the northwest of the island.

Lucy quickly set up a GoFundMe to raise money for Jay’s family, who are also in Tenerife searching for the missing 19-year-old.

The last time anyone heard from apprentice bricklayer Jay, from Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire, was when he phoned Lucy to say he was “lost in the middle of nowhere”.

He had returned to a secluded Airbnb with two Britons the night before, after partying at a rave with Lucy and another friend, Brad.

After missing the bus, he began walking for 11 hours back to his accommodation and disappeared into the rural mountains.

A mammoth hunt with police, mountain rescue, firefighters, volunteers, drones, sniffer dogs and a helicopter was quickly launched.

Much to Jay’s parents’ dismay, the active search was called off last Sunday.

Police have promised to keep themselves informed of any developments in the situation.

Lucy has previously said she found Jay’s unexplained disappearance “bizarre” and “suspicious”.

She warned more than two weeks ago: “Something weird is happening. It’s suspicious. In two days, you tell me that no one has seen it.

“There’s a restaurant 10 minutes away that he may have seen or walked past. It’s suspicious and it’s weird.”

Fighting back tears, Lucy said her friend “wasn’t stupid” and had called her from an area “full of hikers” in “broad daylight”.

She added: “It’s true that it didn’t open for another two hours, but if I had been in his shoes, I would have sat down and waited in the restaurant until it opened.

“As soon as it opened, I would have said, ‘Can you put my phone on charge,’ and then I would have called someone, I would have called a taxi.”

Lucy has not spoken publicly about her friend’s disappearance for over a fortnight, but previously revealed she had tracked down the two people who saw Jay just an hour before he disappeared.

She said: “We managed to find the house. I knocked on the door and there were two people there.”

The couple told Lucy Jay they went out to buy cigarettes before returning to their apartment.

Once he returned, he told them he wanted to return to his accommodation.

Lucy added: “They told me he spoke to the neighbours next door and they told him there was a bus every 10 minutes back to Los Cristianos.

“The bus stop was right next to the house.

“So obviously if he had gone to take the bus he wouldn’t have gotten lost because it (the stop) was visible from the front door.”

Jay’s worried parents, Debbie and Warren, along with his brother Zak and extended family, search for him themselves in the sparse brush.

Warren told the Manchester Evening News he believed his son may have been heading towards the sea when he disappeared.

The heartbroken father also shared his anger at the police response to Jay’s disappearance.

He said: “I’m past the point of sadness and I’m angry, if that makes any sense.

“I’m angry because nothing happened. If I had left you here and then you had disappeared, don’t you think the police would be on my back?”

Several search experts and a former detective have claimed the teenager could be alive somewhere in the mountains.

Juan Garcia, an Army reservist and search specialist, believes police called off the search for 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 leads open until they’re proven not to be viable.”

“It takes a long time to survive without food. It depends on the amount of rain and the amount of water available.

“But we should certainly always consider this possibility.”