He was found ‘tired and disorientated in a gorge’
Police in Tenerife involved in the search for Jay Slater have found a different missing Brit.
Search teams in a barren park near to where the missing teenager was last seen ended up finding a Scottish hiker who had got lost in the area’s mountainous terrain.
The 51-year-old, who has not been named, was found by police on Friday, the Sun reports.
Police said he had gone into a “difficult” area that is not “suitable for travel”.
When the hiker didn’t return to his start point after several hours, locals told teams who were already in the area as part of their search efforts to find Slater.
They broke off from their hunt for Slater and managed to locate the hiker at the Asomada Gorge.
A spokesman for local police said: “Officers acting alongside a Civil Protection mountain rescue team have helped rescue a Scottish hiker aged 51 in the Asomada Gorge in the Los Carrizales neighbourhood. Local residents saw how the hiker went into an area of difficult access which was not suitable for transit early in the morning and had yet to return to his starting point several hours later.
“They alerted officers who were at that moment involved in the search for young Jay Slater. He was found tired and disorientated by the officers and the rescue team who helped him out of the gorge.”
For more than a week now, a huge search operation has been underway in the north-west of Tenerife for Slater, a 19-year-old who went missing last Monday (June 17).
He had travelled there with friends for the NRG music festival, in the tourist hotspot of Playa de las Americas, on the south of the island.
After leaving the festival at Papagayo night club on Sunday, the apprentice bricklayer got in a car with two men he had met to drive to the northwestern mountain village of Masca in the Rural de Teno national park. This was a 40-minute drive away from his accommodation.
He was last heard from at around 08:00 BST on Monday when he phoned his friend Lucy Law, telling her he had missed a bus and had tried to walk the 10-hour journey but was lost.
He said he needed water and only had one per cent battery left on his phone.
His phone then cut off, and his last known location was shown as the national park.
Rescue efforts have centred on the Rural de Teno Park, situated on the other side of Tenerife to where Slater and his friends were staying.
The park is mountainous, remote, and is made up of deep ravines and daunting mountains. Slater’s friends initially tried to search the area on Tuesday June 18, with local police and mountain rescue teams then joining the efforts.
Search dogs, drones and a helicopter have also been used, whilst Slater’s family have flown to the island to help the search.
The search was temporarily moved to the Los Cristianos area on the south of the island on Wednesday due to a potential lead, however efforts have returned to the north-west and Masca.
On Sunday, police examined outbuildings at the bottom of a ravine in Rural de Teno, close to where his phone last pinged. Searchers could be seen looking into blue barrels outside one of these buildings, Sky News reports.
Related links:
LISTEN: You Must Be Jokin’ with Aideen McQueen – Faith healers, Coolock craic and Gigging as Gaeilge
