Jay Slater’s buddy Lucy Law posts emotional message after physique discovered

Jay Slater’s best friend has posted an emotional message to the ‘happiest and most smiley person’ after a body was found near where his phone last pinged. 

The 19-year-old apprentice bricklayer from Lancashire went missing on June 17, and yesterday Spanish police announced the discovery of a body with Jay’s ‘possessions and clothes’ nearby. 

The teenager had jetted off to the Spanish island for an eight-day holiday with his best mates Lucy Law and Brad Hargreaves before he vanished. 

In a heart-wrenching Instagram post published last night Lucy wrote: ‘Honestly lost for words. Always the happiest and most smiley person in the room, you was one of a kind Jay and you’ll be missed more than you know. 

‘I’m sure you’ll ‘have your dancing shoes polished and ready’ waiting for us all. We all love you buddy. Fly high.’

It comes as:

Alongside the message she published a collection of pictures and videos of the pair hanging out over the years.  

Formal identification has not yet taken place, but officers say that ‘everything is pointing to it being’ the missing teen. 

Brad, who had been helping with the search before flying back to Britain last week, also paid tribute to Jay yesterday. 

He posted two snaps of him and his friend alongside a heartfelt message: ‘Nothing be the same without you. Rest easy brother. Love you always.’

The body was found in an ‘inaccessible’ and very remote part of the island, which the BBC reported is part of the reason it ‘took so long to find any evidence’.

The terrain is described as ‘dense’ and is understood to be full of uneven ground and shrubland. There is also no sign of any emergency services in the nearby village.

The force released video footage of rescuers climbing rock faces and battling through scrub as they carried out the search.

Part of the clip shows two members of the search team being winched out of the area by helicopter after the body had been found and recovered.

His grief-stricken mother Debbie Duncan, 55, has ‘lots of questions which she hopes will be answered in the coming days,’ a source close to the family said.

‘Debbie is completely devastated,’ the insider told The Sun, adding that the ‘hardest’ part for Duncan is that the remains were ‘found so close to the original search site’.

The search for Jay had been carried out ‘under a secrecy order from the court in charge of the investigation’, LBC reported.

Officials had been ‘carrying on with the search, unbeknownst to anyone’ in a bid to stop internet sleuths from searching themselves.

‘The discovery was possible thanks to the incessant and discreet search carried out by the Civil Guard during these 29 days, in which the natural space was preserved so that it would not be filled with onlookers,’ its statement read.

Tenerife’s Guardia Civil said on Monday that officers are waiting for the results of a post-mortem examination to confirm the cause of death.

Jessica Rogers, the girlfriend of Jay Slater’s brother, took to social media yesterday to pay tribute to the teenager.

She posted a photograph of Jay with a blue love heart, accompanied by the words: ‘Will love you forever’.

Jay’s family endured conspiracy theories and ‘awful comments’ being posted online during the search for the apprentice bricklayer, including hoax hostage videos.

Williams-Thomas told The Mirror the family received ‘two videos posted of separate people, meant to be Jay, having been beaten up’.

One clip allegedly featured the ‘We have your son’, with the detective saying it was ‘created for publication by someone wanting to give the impression they had Jay held hostage’.

He explained that ‘within hours’ they had established that Jay was not the individual depicted in the videos.

Members of the local community in Lancshire have been tying blue ribbons to posts to symbolise their support during the search.