Spanish police searching for Jay Slater have found another missing Briton during their rescue operation, which has just entered its ninth day.
The teenager flew from Lancashire to the Canary Islands for a music festival but disappeared after he went to stay with people he met during a night out on June 16.
During his final call to his friend Lucy Law at 8am local time last Monday, the 19-year-old said his phone had only one per cent battery, he was thirsty and he did not know where he was.
His last location showed he was in the Rural de Teno Park - an area popular among hikers. He has not been seen since.
A missing Briton has been found during the search for Jay SlaterFacebook/PADuring their search for the teenager, police in Tenerife have revealed that they managed to find a 51-year-old Scottish hiker, who has not yet been named, who got lost in the same national park.
Police said in a social media post: “Locals observed how said hiker entered very early into an area of difficult access not suitable for travel and after several hours passed without him returning to the starting point, they alerted the agents who were at that time in the area searching for missing young man, Jay Slater.
“Tired and disoriented, he was located by the agents and the rescue team who helped him get out of the ravine.”
Today marks the ninth day of searching for the teenager, with teams focusing on three different areas - the Masca Gorge, La Vica, and Las Portelas, as well as the surrounding Masca area.
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Last known location of Jay SlaterPAWhilst Slater has yet to be found, his family released CCTV yesterday showing a “possible sighting” of the 19-year-old sitting on a bench over three miles away from where he vanished.
The image shows a male walking past a church in the village at around 6pm on Monday - 10 hours after friends reportedly last heard from him.
His family says the footage could possibly have resembled Slater.
However, the Guardia Civil has not confirmed whether the image is being investigated.
His mum Debbie Duncan also said a witness had told police they had seen Slater sitting on a bench with a pair of men, just over three miles away from the village of Masca.
Search teams have been looking for British teen Jay Slater for nine days
PAYesterday, a former chief inspector with the Metropolitan Police said that he would treat the disappearance of Slater as a murder enquiry, stating that things are “not looking good” for the 19-year-old.
Steve Gaskin, who held his post at the Met for 25 years, said that when a missing person's report came in to the police, he would decide to either treat it as a missing person's inquiry or a murder case.
“If we treat this like a murder from the outset, then if it turns out not to be then nothing's lost, we only have a few hours - people call it the golden hour, but really it's the golden 24 hours - to gather forensic evidence before it's too late,” he told the Daily Mirror.
“I'd want to know what he'd had from breakfast. Why has a 19-year-old bricklayer gone missing, what was he doing there, I would want to know everything about him, who was the last person to see him, check all their backgrounds too, I'd be speaking to police in the UK, has he got a criminal record, here or in Spain, what do we know about him.
"The longer this goes on the more you're likely to suspect a criminal element. It's not looking good after this amount of time."
