JAY SLATER’S friend Lucy Mae Law has shared a new picture of the missing teen 18 days after he vanished in Tenerife.
Taking to her Instagram for the first time in weeks, Lucy posted a snap of the pair together with a crying face emoji.
Lucy was the last person to speak to Jay on the morning of June 17, and has been out searching for him in Tenerife ever since.
The pair flew out to the holiday island together and went to a rave at Papagayo nightclub on June 16 during the NRG music festival.
He vanished the next morning in Rural de Teno park, a sparse parkland area on the north-west of the island.
Lucy soon set up a GoFundMe to raise money for Jay’s family who are also in Tenerife searching for the missing 19-year-old.
Apprentice bricklayer Jay, from Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire, was last heard from when he phoned Lucy to tell her he was “lost in the middle of nowhere”.
He had gone back to a remote Airbnb with two British men the night before, after partying at a rave with Lucy and another pal Brad.
After missing the bus, he started walking the 11-hour route back to his accommodation and disappeared in the rural mountains.
A mammoth hunt with police, mountain rescue, firefighters, volunteers, drones, sniffer dogs and a helicopter was quickly launched.
To the devastation of Jay’s parents, the active search was called off last Sunday.
Police have promised to remain on top of any fresh developments.
Lucy has previously said she finds Jay’s unexplained disappearance “weird” and “suspicious”.
She warned more than two weeks ago: “There’s something weird going on. It is suspicious. In two days you’re telling me someone’s not seen him.
“There’s a restaurant 10 minutes away that he would have seen or walked past. It’s suspicious and it’s weird.”
Fighting back tears, Lucy said her friend “isn’t stupid” and he called her from an area “full of hikers” in “broad daylight”.
She added: “Fair enough it didn’t open for another two hours but if that were me I would have sat and waited at the restaurant till it opened.
“As soon as it opened I would have said, ‘Please can you put my phone on charge’ and then I would have rung someone, I would have rung a taxi.”
Lucy hasn’t spoken publicly about her friend’s disappearance in over a fortnight, but previously revealed she had tracked down the two people who saw Jay just an hour before he disappeared.
She said: “We managed to find the house. I knocked on the door and there were two people there.”
The pair told Lucy Jay had gone out to buy cigarettes before returning to their apartment.
Once he got back he told them he wanted to go back to his own accommodation.
Lucy added: “They told me he’d spoken to the next door neighbours and they’d told him there was a bus every 10 minutes back down to Los Cristianos.
“The bus stop was right next to the house.
“So obviously if he’d gone to get the bus he wouldn’t have got lost because it [the stop] was visible from the front door.”
Jay’s worried parents Debbie and Warren, alongside his brother Zak and extended family, are searching for him themselves in the sparse brushlands.
Warren told Manchester Evening News he thinks his son may have been heading towards the sea when he vanished.
The heartsick dad also shared his anger over the police response to Jay’s disappearance.
He said: “I’ve gone past the sadness bit and I’m angry, if that makes any sense.
“I’m angry that nothing’s happened. If I left you here and then you just disappeared, do you not think police would be on my case?”
Several search experts and a former detective have claimed the teen could be alive somewhere in the mountains.
Army reservist and search pro Juan García, believes cops called off the search for missing Jay too soon and previously warned he could be feeding on plants and rainwater to stay alive.
Ex-detective Hedges told The Sun: “It’s certainly possible. I think it’s important to let the investigation keep all lines of inquiry open until they’re proven to be not viable.
“It is quite a long time to survive without food. Depends on how much rain there is, as to whether there’s sufficient water.
“But certainly, one should always consider that possibility.”
