Jay Slater fearful ‘cactus was toxic’ when he pricked leg on it, police say
Jay Slater was concerned that a cactus that cut his leg would poison him, right before he disappeared without a trace, police said.
Spanish police have held their first press conference since Jay Slater went missing in Tenerife, on the 13th day of the search. The Civil Guard gave the new statement as it geared up for a full day of searching, in a renewed effort to find the missing 19-year-old from Lancashire.
And asked if we know for certain that Jay started from the point of the search, before walking down to the bottom of the ravine, police revealed interesting details.
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(Image: Stan Kujawa)
“Effectively yes. Another thing that leads us to that conclusion is that when he was on the phone to Lucy, he got caught by a cactus and he was worried that they might be poisonous – she said, don’t worry, it won’t be poisonous – but for that, he had to have left the main road,” authorities said.
“If you were walking along the main road you wouldn’t get pricked by a cactus. To do that, you would have had to have left the main road and be half way up the mountain.”
(Image: PA)
Speaking at the beginning of the search in the first press conference of the 13-day mission, Cipriano Martin, Chief of the Mountain Rescue team of the Guardia Civil, said: “The plan will consist of carrying out a search with the people that have gathered here today, a thorough search, because at the stage we’re at, we need to start ruling areas out, and need to be sure that the area we’re searching – even though you may have already done a lot of work in the last few days – is looked at really thoroughly, and then can be ruled out.
“It’s going to be – obviously – based off of the evidence that we have. And the evidence that we have is: his last position, the conversations he had that last day [before he disappeared], and we will centre the search around this area.”
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