Missing Jay Slater's dad has said the family's 'hands are tied' as he appealed for more help from British authorities to locate his son.
Warren Slater said he wanted to 'ask the British authorities to help' with the desperate search, three weeks on from when Jay first went missing, adding 'we need experts'.
The teenager's dad said that since Spanish authorities halted their search for Jay after 14 days, it was 'just' the family who remained in Tenerife to hunt for the 19-year-old. He said the rugged terrain of the valleys where Jay was last located would take an army '10 years' to cover.
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“We need to, as a full family, do a proper press conference and ask the British authorities to help," he said. "He’s a British citizen. Get Interpol involved. It’s just us. I haven’t got a team.
"We need a team to come over here and find out for us what the police are doing and what we need to do. Our hands are tied over here, we need experts. How long can you stay here for? It’ll take an army 10 years to cover all this. I’d employ a team of Gurkhas."
Jay Slater went missing on June 17 while holidaying in the remote Rural de Teno area of Tenerife for a three-day music festival with friends. The teenager left his companions to stay at a secluded Airbnb with two other festival-goers in the early hours of Monday morning and attempted to walk back to his accommodation later that day.
The last signal from Jay's phone came from somewhere in the mountainous region near the village of Masca, which became the focus of the Spanish police's search before it was officially called off last Sunday.
Now, only Jay's family and a handful of volunteers remain searching for the teenager on the island. Speaking about the rugged terrain following a search on Saturday (July 6), Mr Slater said: “It’s the fourth time I’ve done this. It was hard, I nearly put my eye out.”
He also said he wasn’t impressed with the official search local police organised last weekend. He said: “I was quite disappointed last Saturday when they did the search, they said the whole island was going to turn out. Let all the big boys do it, the police told me the big, big search was Saturday.
"We got down in that valley at 2pm and there wasn’t a soul. The way they made it out when they said they were going to have the biggest ever search.”
