Mother of Jay Slater points tearful plea for individuals to seek out her son

The mother of missing British teenager Jay Slater has issued a tearful plea for people to find her son as the chaotic search for him continues. 

Mountain rescue crews and sniffer dogs had been searching the mountainous area of north-west Tenerife for Jay, 19, from Lancashire, up until this afternoon.

But suddenly police focus shifted to the tourist hotspots of Los Cristianos and Playa de Las Americas in south Tenerife, after a false sighting of him getting out of a taxi. 

It later emerged the report was false and police, having wasted precious time in the blistering 27C heat, were forced to move attention back to their original site. 

Jay’s devastated mother Debbie Duncan told ITN: ‘It’s a nightmare. It’s just an absolute living nightmare. It’s like a dream – it’s like it’s not happening, it really is. I wouldn’t wish this on anybody. 

‘I just want my baby back. Please, just anybody who can help just look for him. There’s a massive area up there, massive. It’s over 48 hours now since he last had any contact with anybody. 

‘He’s out there somewhere, or somebody knows where he is. We just need to find my baby.’ 

The search for the apprentice bricklayer from Oswaldtwistle enters its third day with Jay’s last sighting on Sunday night at the NRG music festival in southern Tenerife. 

His mother said: ‘First holiday abroad, saving up, looking forward to this event, three-day DJs from everywhere, absolutely buzzing about it.’

She added: ‘Now I just wish I hadn’t have encouraged him to go, I should have said ”don’t go to Tenerife”. 

‘He’s just an ace person. Everyone loves being in his company. He’s the life and soul, a beautiful boy, a good looking boy. He needs to be here. 

‘I said to him as well, I said ”Jay please have your wits about you, you’re in a foreign country, just stay together”.’ 

The teenager, who was on his first holiday with friends, is believed to have got into a car with two men in the early hours of Monday and ended up at their accommodation in a national park about 40 minutes drive away.

Panic erupted when, at around 8.50am, a disoriented Jay called his friend Lucy Mae as he tried to walk back to Playa de las Americas but was thirsty, lost and only had one per cent battery on his phone.

The call cut out and the teenager has not been seen or heard from since, but his last known location was in the remote Rural de Teno Park, a 10-hour walk from where he was staying.

His distraught mother Debbie said: ‘It’s just traumatic and it doesn’t feel real. It’s just awful, it’s horrendous.

‘I think he’s been taken against his will with what’s been said, but it’s in the hands of the police.’

‘He’s just a great person who everyone wanted to be with. He’s good looking, he’s a popular boy.’ 

Valuable time in the hunt for the missing teenager have been wasted after Spanish police moved their search to the other side of the island after a false sighting.  

Earlier, a spokesman for the Civil Guard confirmed ‘the search operation has moved to the south of the island’ in Los Cristianos and Playa de Las Americas.

While a spokesman did not offer any more detail, it was added: ‘It’s obviously down to information that’s been received as the investigation has progressed.

‘As things stand at the moment the search in the mountainous area near Masca in the north has been halted.’

But it was later ruled out as a false sighting by a well-meaning member of the public. Jay’s mother Ms Duncan told MailOnline: ‘It was a false alarm but with good intention. 

‘Someone thought they had seen him get into a car with two other guys but it was wrong.

‘The search is still focusing on the north where he was last seen. We still don’t have any updates and need people to keep looking.’

Social media posts from the night before show Jay smiling in a grey t-shirt with green patches on the shoulders.

It has now emerged that Jay also posted an out of focus photo of a hand holding a cigarette at 7.30am at the property where he travelled to with the two men.

His mother and father Warren have rushed out to Tenerife with other relatives and friends to join the search.

Ms Duncan told MailOnline earlier: ‘We all just want him found safe and sound as quickly as possible.’

There at now around 15 family and friends in Tenerife searching for Jay. Among them are his mother Ms Duncan, brother Zak and father Warren Slater, who lives in Blackburn. 

Local hoteliers and car hire firms helping out free of charge. The family are also being assisted by the British embassy. 

Speaking from the south of the island where her son had been staying, Ms Duncan  said: ‘I’m obviously beside myself with worry which is why I’ve flown out here with my eldest son to do anything we can to help.

‘We’re just praying the police or someone finds Jay. I know there’s a mountain rescue team out and a helicopter.

‘Nothing’s ever going to be enough when your youngest son’s gone missing but it sounds as if the police here are taking this very seriously and doing the best job they can.’

She added: ‘He’d been at a three-day festival so he would have consumed a fair bit of alcohol but Jay was snapchatting with friends before he went missing and seemed very compos mentis.’

She told the BBC her son is an ‘all-round nice, bubbly guy with hundreds of friends’. He’s gorgeous, he’s beautiful. He’s my baby,’ she said.

Staying at home in Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire, to ‘hold down the fort’ is Ms Duncan’s partner and Jay’s stepfather Andy Watson.

Speaking exclusively to MailOnline, Mr Watson said: ‘Who lives in the mountains? It would be wrong to speculate, but everyone has their own impression in their head.

‘I wouldn’t have gone off with two people I didn’t know. But he’s 19, he’s impressionable, isn’t he? If someone said there’s more drink at our house, he’s going to go.’

Mr Watson added: ‘He has me run him down to the hairdressers, 200 yards away – why would he walk eight hours?’

He added: ‘It’s just all like it’s not really happening. When it’s in front of you on the news and his picture’s looking back, it’s like this is not happening.

‘It happens to other people, not us. But that’s not right, is it? It’s not a good time at all. Having said that, nothing definite’s happened, has it?’

Ms Duncan previously revealed she had received prank calls from Brits with ‘northern accounts’ on hidden numbers claiming they had kidnapped her son and held him for ransom.

She said: ‘Some of the phone calls I’ve been getting have been horrible. I just don’t know why people would want to do things like this.

‘I’ve been getting lots of prank calls. It’s sickening. People ringing me and saying they’ve got Jay because he owes them money.

‘But it’s not putting me off and I want to keep this in the news because it’s going to increase the chances of Jay being found safe and well which is obviously what we’re praying for.’

Former Coronation Street star Vicky Entwistle has shared a heart-wrenching post on social media, as she prays for Jay’s safe return.

Ms Entwistle, who is a close friend of the family, used her social media platform to share the missing poster of Jay which has details of his last location.

The actress who played Janice Battersby in the ITV soap said: ‘My God Mother’s Grandson has gone missing. To join the police search. Hope to God they find him. Please pray for him.’

A FCDO spokesperson told MailOnline: ‘We are supporting the family of a British man who has been reported missing in Spain and are in contact with the local authorities.’ 

A Civil Guard spokeswoman in Tenerife said just before 11am local time today, before it emerged a search had begun in the south a 45-minute drive from the Masca area: ‘We are still searching for the missing man.

‘The search operation is being conducted by the Civil Guard and different units are participating.

‘They include the helicopter unit, the cynological unit which uses dogs, the Greim mountain rescue and intervention unit and citizen security patrols.

‘The helicopter unit has one helicopter which has been participating in the search since it began on Monday.

‘We’re not going to talk about the number of officers involved but it’s a large operation.

‘The focus area is the area where we were informed the missing man had disappeared which is the narrow valley within the Teno Massif called the Masca Gorge.’

She added: ‘When there’s a disappearance police always look at all options and investigate all the possibilities.

‘In this case no hypothesis has been ruled out as you’d expect at the start of any investigation.’