Owner of remote Tenerife Airbnb where Jay Slater stayed saw him walking along mountain path

Report from Andy Bonner in Tenerife.

The owner of the remote Airbnb where missing Jay Slater stayed before vanishing in Tenerife says she saw after he left - walking along the mountain road towards a beauty spot.

Ofelia, the owner of the holiday rental, Casa Abuela Tina, where Jay is believed to have stayed with two people he met on the island after partying at the NRG festival, said she does not know what happened to him after she drove past him as he walked.

As he walked Jay, 19, made contact with friend Lucy Mae Law at around 8.50am, on 17 June, telling her he "didn't know where he was" and needed water,

The apprentice brick-layer said he had begun an 10-hour trek back to his hotel after missing the bus.

Ofelia says she twice told Jay he would have a two hour wait for the bus as she saw the teen, from Oswaldtwistle, in Lancashire, as she left for home.

"On Monday morning I was on my way home when a young man came up to me to ask me about the bus timetable," she told ITV Granada Reports. "I told him that the next bus was at 10am.

"Shortly after he came back to me apparently he didn't understand me due to the language barrier and asked me again what time the next bus was due.

"I told him again that the next bus was at 10am, pointing at him with the 10 fingers of my hand.

"After this conversation I left to go home.

"Later on I left my house because I was going to take the car towards Buena Vista, and about a kilometre, a kilometre and a half, from the house I saw a guy walking in the same direction as I was going with the car.

"I thought to myself it was the same guy who asked me the bus timetable.

"When I passed-by him with the car I could confirm that it was the same guy, after that I did't see him again.

"I don't know if he took another road, turned back, or if something happened to him on the way."

Family and friends of missing Jay Slater say they are “drained beyond words” as the search for him entered its fifth day, with a helicopter and rescue dogs now involved.

The last mobile phone data pinged in a remote mountainous area around half a mile further north from the small village of Masca.

Specialist search teams have "found nothing" in the hunt for Jay, but say there is still hope he is alive.

Civil Defence officers at the search base said the area, split up into three different ravines, is around 30km wide.

One member of the team revealed they are currently carrying out searches in three different areas - the Masca Gorge, La Vica, and Las Portelas, as well as the surrounding Masca area.

Aside from one windy and challenging main road through Masca, there are very few footpaths, with miles of challenging terrain.

A member of the specialist search team confirmed drones and police dogs had not been deployed on Friday.

A member of the Civil Defence search team said: "We still have hope that he's alive, up until the last moment when the last hope is lost.

"The truth is that we feel a bit frustrated because we can't find him. It's so big [here] that it's very difficult to search in such a steep area. But we're doing everything we can.

"We haven't found anything, we have combed this entire trail, we've been up and down but, until now, nothing.

"This morning we have concentrated on searching from down below, up Masca, along the path until it almost reaches the ravine, at the high part, without finding anything.

"Now the second part has been this path that goes up and almost reaches Las Portelas, the high part of Las Portelas trail and nothing was found either. We've been to the ravine to see where he supposedly took his last selfie and downward from there.

"We're waiting this afternoon for the drone units to come one more time to do a flight over the area, and the search dogs again too. Very difficult... it's a very difficult area to search. Just because it's so steep.

"Yesterday there were 25 volunteers, five dogs between them, and four drones from volunteers too, besides the professional ones.

"We are concentrating our search in three ravines, over an area of at least 30 square kilometres."

The British owner of a Tenerife car rental company has also said the community has been “rallying around” in the search, and he has made cars available on the island for people helping.

Owner of Sanasty Car Hire Tenerife, Andrew Knight, 29, told the PA news agency he has made 10 cars available free of charge to help people get to the search location, and has helped the search himself.

He said: “I was trying to work out ways I could assist and I had some cars sitting around, and I decided to go on the (Jay Slater Facebook) group and offer those cars so people who wanted to go and join the search could take the cars free of charge, just to get some people up there.

“It’s a very, very remote landscape. It’s difficult to get to, it’s about a 45-minute drive from the main area of Los Cristianos, Las Americas.”

Several cars a day have been rented out for this purpose so far, including by the uncle of Mr Slater, Mr Knight claimed, adding that some people had returned with “cuts on their legs from all the cactuses”.

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