An inquest into the death of Jay Slater has heard that the teen “bragged” about taking an expensive wrist watch, prior to his disappearance last June.
On the evening of June 16, the 19-year-old spent the night partying at the Papagayo nightclub in Playa de las Americas, before travelling to an apartment with Ayub Qassim and his friend ‘Rocky’, in the remote village Masca.
Just before 9am he left the Airbnb apartment and set out on an 11-hour trek back to his accommodation in the south of the island after missing the local bus.
Jay phoned his friend, Lucy, who he had been staying with, to say he was thirsty, had didn’t know where he was and his phone was about to run out of battery, shortly before his phone died. Later that day he was reported missing, and a huge search commenced.
Theories as to what happened circulated online, including one that suggested he had allegedly “taken a £12,000 Rolex” before he disappeared.
Missing persons investigator Mark Williams-Thomas previously indicated that the teen must have been “feeling scared” upon departing the accommodation on that morning.
In a video recorded shared on X in July 2 2024, Williams-Thomas said: “We’ve received information that would suggest that Jay left the rental property feeling scared and he would not return to the rental, even though that would have been the most sensible course of action.”
The former-detective also claimed that Jay had ‘posted a Snapchat saying that he’d taken a £12,000 Rolex from a person’.
Jay was attending a music festival in Tenerife with friends Lucy Law and Brad Hargreaves before he disappeared on Monday, June 17, 2024, sparking a huge month-long search.
An inquest into the teen’s death this morning heard how Jay sent a message to a witness, Josh Forshaw, who met Jay and his friends as they waited to board the plane from Manchester to Tenerife, bragging about taking an expensive watch strap.
The message read: “Ended up getting thrown out with two Mali kids, just took an AP (Audemars Piguet, another luxury watch brand) off somebody and was on the way to sell it,” reports LancsLive.
Josh had shared contact details with Jay and met the group at the music festival. He told the inquest that Jay “seemed dead happy” and that he was “off his head on drugs”.
Josh also said Jay had drunk “10 to 15 vodka shots” that night and that Jay asked him to break an MDMA (ecstasy) pill in half for him and Bradley.
Josh Forshaw told the hearing that Jay said he was going to sell the watch strap for “10 quid”. Josh claims that this is slang for £10,000, not £10. Josh has also told the coroner that Jay sent him a picture showing “knives down his trousers”, but admitted that he didn’t inform Spanish police about this image.
Spanish police searched Parque Rural de Teno nature reserve in Tenerife and Jay’s mum Debbie Duncan, dad Warren Slater, and older brother Zak all helped in the search alongside mountain research teams and volunteers.
But the search for the 19 year-old came to a tragic end four weeks after he disappeared on July 15, 2024, when police discovered his ‘lifeless body’.
While his exact cause of death has not been confirmed, a preliminary autopsy found Jay likely died following a catastrophic fall, with the pathologist finding he’d suffered several broken bones.
An inquest into his death is currently ongoing.
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