Jay Slater's best friends Lucy Law and Brad Hargreaves fly home to UK despite teenager still missing

Slater, 19, was on holiday on the island when he went missing. His phone was last traced to the Masca ravine in a remote national park in the north of the island.

Dozens of police officers, rescue teams and firefighters have been looking since then in the steep valley, using dogs, drones and a helicopter.

Hargreaves has now returned to his family home in Oswaldtwistle in Lancashire alongside his mum who flew out to help in the search.

It comes after he revealed he heard the 19-year-old slipping on rocks in a video call just hours before he was reported as missing to cops.

Meanwhile, Law, 18, headed home sometime earlier after doing all she could to help in the now four-week search.

She had set up a GoFundMe page that has raised over £52,000.

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS:

• Farage takes swipe at ‘little man’ Bercow as he sparks outrage in first Commons speech
  
• Starmer 'breaks with convention' as he issues statement on Diane Abbott
• Universal Credit clampdown set to be introduced with some people denied benefits

It comes as Slater's friends have addressed rumours on social media that the pair had some involvement in criminal activity while on the island. In a statement, Hargreaves said: "We ain’t drug mules or whatever.... people need to know the facts before talking s*** on the internet..."

It comes as Jay Slater’s uncle addressed a number of conspiracy theories cropping up on social media. Glen Duncan, 41, who is the brother of Jay’s mother Debbie, joined the search alongside other members of the family.

He said: "I'm not on social media or anything so I can just block it out. It's the world we live in. If he's gone on a trail like a path like this and he's got lost there or fallen down I think he would have been found by now.

"I've been thinking third-party involvement from the start. There's just some things that have already been out there. Why would two lads hire a villa up here? They're down on the strip, you know what it's like down there."

Meanwhile, former Lambeth Missing Persons Unit boss Mike Neville told GB News: "My personal theory is, he’s in that park somewhere. He’s taken some substances possibly and had some drink, he’s confused and exhausted.

"There’s all that background noise as well. When you know that somebody stayed with someone who is a convicted drug dealer, then you need to look into it. The police have seemingly been too quick to dismiss this and say things are conspiracy theories.

"It was initially portrayed as Jay being a young lad on his first holiday but it turns out he’s been convicted of a violent assault. As well as a search of the park, the police should be looking at the background and asking 'is there anything else going on?'

"They don’t seem to have done that. It’s been badly handled in that sense."