Friends of teenager missing in Tenerife urge UK and Spain to send specialist search teams

Friends of a British teenager who disappeared in Tenerife have urged British and Spanish police to send reinforcements to aid the search as they have resorted to hunting for evidence and interviewing potential witnesses themselves.

- Hannah Al-Othman

Police on the island have been looking for Jay Slater, a 19-year-old apprentice bricklayer from Lancashire, since Monday morning with the help of drones and a helicopter.

But the area where he disappeared, in Rural de Teno nature reserve, is so vast and rugged that friends have said specialist search teams from the UK and the Spanish mainland need to be drafted in to help.

Slater's friend Lucy, with whom he had been on holiday, was among those urging UK police to fly out to help with the search.

She reported Slater missing after she received a call from him at about 8.15am on the morning he disappeared, in which he told her that he did not know where he was, that he was thirsty and had just 1% phone battery.

"I just think they need to get as much help as they can out here," she said. "There's no helicopters here [now]. He's been missing for that long now, what are they actually doing?"

Lucy said she welcomed the support from local police "who know the area", but that the search operation needed to be much more intensive.

"There's nobody here," she said.