A best friend of missing British teenager Jay Slater claims he heard him sliding on rocks in their last phone conversation.
Brad Hargreaves was emotional as he appeared on ITV’s This Morning to speak of the 19-year-old’s “zest for life”.
Mr Hargreaves believes he is one of last people to have spoken to Jay prior to his disappearance in Tenerife, telling crime journalist Isla Traquair: “He was on the phone and he goes: ‘I’ve got to walk and go all down that road’.”
Jay, from Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire, hung up as “someone else was ringing him” and promised to call back but never did.
The apprentice bricklayer had attended the NRG music festival on the Spanish island with Mr Hargreaves and their friend Lucy Law before his disappearance and was last heard from on June 17.
The walk from Jay’s last known location, Rural de Teno Park, to his accommodation would have taken about 11 hours on foot.
Search teams, co-ordinated by the Spanish police, the Guardia Civil, have since mounted a huge 12-day manhunt using helicopters, drones and search dogs to scour mountainous areas but are yet to find him.
Mr Hargreaves added that Jay would have avoided going down the road mentioned during their phone call.
He revealed that he could also hear Jay’s feet slide on the rocks, signalling to him his friend “went off the road.. That’s how I knew he went off the road because, you know when you walk on gravel, or whatever it is, you can... you know what I mean, stones.
“He was on the phone walking down a road and he’d gone over a little bit - not a big drop - but a tiny little drop and he was going down, and he said ‘I’ll ring you back, I’ll ring you back’ because I think someone else was ringing him.
“If he was thinking like me, he would have gone back up and started walking on the path again… He wouldn’t have gone all that way down there.”
Ms Traquair asked: “You said you could see his feet and he was sort of sliding down the hill?”
Mr Hargreaves replied: “Yeah, that’s how I knew he went off the road because I could hear like when you walk on gravel… stones.”
The reporter probed: “Were you concerned at that point?”
Mr Hargreaves said: “Not at the time because we were both laughing and he said, ‘Look where I am’ and I was like, ‘I’ve just come out of a festival’ and he didn’t seem concerned on the phone until we knew how far away he was.
“I said: ‘Put your location on and he said ‘a 15 minute drive or a 14 hour walk, I don’t know if it’s accurate or not’ and I said, ‘If it’s only a 15 minute drive, get a taxi’.”
On Friday, police in Tenerife called for volunteers to take part in a new large-scale search for Jay.
The Spanish Civil Guard said in a statement that it would begin at 9am local time on Saturday in the village of Masca, near to his last-known location, and involve surrounding roads, trails and ravines.
