Police in Tenerife have revealed what they believed was the vital piece of information they needed to find missing British teenager Jay Slater after a body has been found on the island.
Jay, 19, from Oswaldtwistle in Lancashire, has been missing on the Spanish island since 17 June after flying over to attend a festival with a group of friends.
The last person to hear from him was his friend Lucy Law, who spoke to him around 8am on the Monday (17 June), with the teenager informing her that he 'didn't know where he was' and had 'cut his leg' on a cactus.
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Prior to the phone call with Lucy, Jay had travelled to an Airbnb in the area with two men.
He later left the property on foot after 'refusing a lift'.
After 29 days of searching, the Tenerife Civil Guard have revealed that a body has been recovered from the mountainous Masca area - close to where Jay's phone had last pinged - and that they believe it to be the missing teenager, pending formal identification.
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"After 29 constant days of searching the lifeless body of a young man has been found in the Masca area," they said in a statement.
"The discovery has been possible thanks to the tireless and discreet search carried out by the Civil Guard over these 29 days."
The statement continued: "Everything is pointing to the body being that of the young British man who disappeared on June 17, pending full identification.
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"Initial inquiries are pointing to him having suffered an accident/fall in the area where he was found."
It is also understood that the body was found alongside Jay's possessions and clothes. Officers are currently waiting on the results from an autopsy, but believe the death was caused by an 'accident'.
According to a report published by The Sun, the Civil Guard co-ordinated with mountain rescue to recover the body via a helicopter due to 'inaccessible' terrain.
The body was then winched up to the helicopter waiting overhead.
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While speaking to reporters Cipriano Martin, head of the Civil Guard's Greim mountain rescue unit, had previously revealed to reporters that he believed Lucy's report that Jay had cut his leg on a cactus was a key clue in understanding that he had left the main road in the area.
"Masca's been looked at, the Juan Lopez ravine, the Retamar ravine, Las Aneas ravine, Los Carrizales ravine, in all the areas we know he's been in because his mobile phone coverage is undeniable and places him there." he explained via The Mirror.
"But we have a difficulty which is that once the phone goes off the antennas stop picking it up, so that while he's walking, and we don't know how long he was walking for, no phone mast is going to detect it, and as the technicians tell us, they look for mobiles and not people, so we're at that point as well, that we have certain information and we have to go on that.
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"Another of the things that leads us to consider that hypothesis is when he rings his friend Lucy and says he's cut himself on a cactus and he's worried because he doesn't know whether it's poisonous or not, and she tells him not to worry that it's not poisonous.
"But for that to happen you have to leave the road because you're not going to cut yourself on a cactus being on the road and he's had to go into the mountains obviously."
Missing persons charity LBT Global have also issued a statement, saying: "LBT Global is saddened to announce that a body found in Tenerife does look to be that of Jay Slater."
Topics: Jay Slater, UK News
Brenna Cooper