Instagram account of teen missing on Spanish island mysteriously active
By Albert Tait
London: The Instagram account of a British teenager missing in Tenerife has reportedly been accessed since he disappeared.
Jay Slater has been missing for almost a week.Credit: Facebook
It has been five days since Jay Slater, 19, went missing on the Spanish island after meeting two men at a music festival and following them back to their cottage.
He was last heard from on Monday morning when he told a friend he was lost in the mountains and desperately thirsty.
Rescue teams were continuing the search on Saturday in the north of the island near Slater’s last known location.
On the Facebook page “Jay Slater Missing”, which has almost half a million followers, an update was posted on Friday addressing rumours that Slater’s Instagram account had been accessed after he vanished.
Rachel Louise Harg, the administrator of the group, said: “For everyone asking who has logged into his Instagram account, it’s not him or her, somebody else has logged in.”
Harg said people who had been “hacking” the social media accounts of Slater’s family were “sick in the head”.
There is no recent activity on Slater’s Instagram account, with the last post from almost three years ago, on July 12, 2021.
However, his close friends and family would be able to see the last time he had logged onto the site. This is because of an Instagram feature that shows the last time a user was active to people they have directly messaged on the site.
Slater travelled to Tenerife with two friends to attend the NRG music festival last Sunday. He left the festival at some time between 3am and 6am in the car of two other British men he met that night.
At 7.30am, he posted a picture on Snapchat showing him smoking a cigarette at the doorway of a cottage in Parque Rural de Teno, more than 30 miles from where the festival was held to the south of the island.
Spanish island Tenerife is a popular holiday destination for Brits.Credit: Elena-studio
At about 8am, Ophelia Medina Hernandez, the owner of the two-bedroom Airbnb property where Slater had travelled to, came across the teenager standing at a nearby bus stop.
He asked when the next bus was to Los Cristianos, a resort area where he was staying, and she signalled it was not for another two hours. Instead of waiting, Slater decided to walk.
After setting off, he rang friend Lucy Law, who had joined him at the music festival, and said he was lost, thirsty, had 1 per cent charge left on his phone, and had cut his leg on a cactus.
His phone died shortly after the call. Its last location was north of the cottage, near the village of Masca.
It is here that much of the search has been concentrated over the past week. Mountain rescue workers, volunteers, drones, dogs, and helicopters have so far been unable to uncover any trace of the teenager.
About 15 of Slater’s friends and family members have flown out to help search. Debbie Duncan, his mother, and his brother have been on the island since Tuesday.
“It’s just traumatic, and it doesn’t feel real. It’s just awful, it’s horrendous,” Duncan said. “He’s just a great person who everyone wanted to be with. He’s good looking, he’s a popular boy.”
Many more have posted on the Facebook page dedicated to finding Slater, which had more than 468,000 members before it was paused after conspiracy theories about his disappearance began to appear.
More than £28,000 ($53,000) has also been raised through a GoFundMe page set up by Law to “get Jay Slater home”.
Lancashire police have offered to provide additional resources to the search but said the Guardia Civil rejected the offer saying it has “the resources they need”.
The Telegraph, London
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