The mother of missing teenager Jay Slater said funds will now be withdrawn from her son’s GoFundMe page, which has already donated more than £36,000.
In a big update shared with fundraisers, Debbie Duncan, who flew to Tenerife the day after 19-year-old Jay went missing, said: “Firstly, thank you all for your support, kind messages and well wishes. It’s hard to comprehend what’s going on but we haven’t given up hope that we will find Jay and come home together.
The heartbroken mother revealed that funds raised from the fundraiser called ‘Bring Jay Slater Home’ will be used to support mountain rescue teams who are “tirelessly searching for Jay”. Debbie explained: “We are currently working with GoFundMe to extract some of the funds that are being held safely.
“I wanted to share that these funds will be used to support the mountain rescue teams who are tirelessly searching for Jay,” she added.
The GoFundMe page was set up by Jay’s best friend Lucy May Law and had an initial goal of £30,000. There was confusion across the country over where the money was going, but it was later revealed that the money would go towards travel and accommodation costs for Jay’s friends and family who flew to Tenerife to help with the search.
Despite the £30,000 target, donations from concerned members of the public have now reached £36,315.
Debbie added in her statement: “I have amazing people around me who are there for me even though we are far away from our loved ones, which is why I will be using some of this money to fly them to Tenerife so we can support each other during this dark time.
Debbie ended her update by thanking the public for their ongoing support. She said: “Thank you again for all your donations and support, it means so much to us.”
His mother previously said she was convinced Jay had been kidnapped “beyond worry”. Jay’s brother Zac, 21, and Jay’s father Warren Slater, who are also in Tenerife and are from Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire, were reported to have left an NRG music event in October, and said Jay’s disappearance “made no sense”.
In Tenerife, he was in a car with two other men and spent the night at an Airbnb in the countryside in the northwest of the island before disappearing on the morning of Monday, June 17th.
The teenager’s last known contact was his girlfriend, Lucy May Law, who claims he called her the morning of his disappearance and said he was disoriented, needed water and had only one percent battery on his phone.
Lucy set up the GoFundMe page shortly after Jay was reported missing, and wrote: “I woke up to a phone call off Jay at 8:30 AM saying ‘he was lost in the mountains, he wasn’t aware of his surroundings, he desperately needed a drink & his phone was on 1%’.
“He had met 2 people on Sunday night and left with them to go to their apartment. Their apartment was miles away from civilisation and in a very secluded location. He left at 8am, and walked half an hour before frantically ringing me when his phone reached 1%. This was 3 days ago now, and no one has seen or heard from him since.”