An autopsy has confirmed that a body found by Spanish rescuers in Tenerife on Monday is that of the missing British teenager Jay Slater.
A court spokesperson has reportedly confirmed that fingerprints taken from the body matched those of the missing 19-year-old from Lancashire. He disappeared after attending a music festival four weeks ago and was last seen walking alone in a remote area in the north of the island, near the village of Masca.
The court said injuries on his body suggested his death had been caused by an accidental fall. “We have a positive identification and more data, fingerprint tests show that the body is [that] of Jay Slater and that the death was caused by trauma consistent with a fall in a rocky area,” a statement by the high court of justice in the Canary Islands said.
Slater’s mother, Debbie Duncan, said in a statement that confirmation of his death was the “worst news”. “I just can’t believe this could happen to my beautiful boy,” she said. “Our hearts are broken.”
Slater had been staying with a group of friends on the coast and had attended the NRG music festival in the nearby resort of Playa De Las Americas. He had left the festival and gone with two men to their Airbnb in the remote Rural de Teno national park, about 11 hours on foot from where he was staying.
Ofelia Medina Hernandez, whose brother owns the Airbnb, said he had asked her about bus times and she later saw him walking uphill in the opposite direction to Los Cristianos, where he had rented an apartment. “It’s dangerous walking around here, it’s easy to lose yourself,” she said. “He walked along the road when I saw him for the last time, up there … He was there alone. He was walking normally, though fast, a little fast.”
Slater phoned a friend, Lucy Law – who had attended the festival but left before him – at about 8.30am on 17 June, saying he was lost, thirsty and his phone battery was on 1%.
Reacting to the news that the body found was Slater’s, Law posted on Instagram: “Honestly lost for words. Always the happiest and most smiley person in the room, you was one of a kind Jay and you’ll be missed more than you know.”
“I’m sure you’ll ‘have your dancing shoes polished and ready’ waiting for us all,” she added. “We all love you buddy. Fly high.”
The Guardia Civil said one of its mountain rescue teams had found Slater’s body while carrying out a search on the ground, four weeks to the day since the teenager went missing.
A search operation had been launched after he was reported missing, with dogs, helicopters and drones employed to help search the rugged terrain. It was scaled down after two weeks, but had continued, with volunteer search experts from both Spain and the UK joining the efforts. “It’s so big [here] that it’s very difficult to search in such a steep area. But we’re doing everything we can,” one member of the Spanish rescue team had told the Guardian. He said it was a “very difficult area to search”, with cliffs, ravines and vegetation.
Tenerife’s El Día newspaper reported that the terrain where the body was found was so inaccessible that a helicopter had to be used to recover it. On Tuesday, rescue teams continued to comb the thick undergrowth to ensure nothing had been missed.
Matthew Searle, from the British overseas missing person charity LBT Global, said it was working with Slater’s family on the next steps, which would include recovering his belongings and repatriating his body.
He said further details about travel plans and funeral arrangements would not be released at this stage and asked for privacy for Slater’s family. He also called for an end to “hurtful comments on social media and elsewhere”, referring to conspiracy theories that have spread rapidly online since Slater’s disappearance.
