The dead body found yesterday (Monday) in the Masca ravine is that of Jay Slater, the British teenager who had been missing in Tenerife since June 17th, according to a spokesperson from the High Court of Justice of the Canary Islands (TSJC).
A statement from the TSJC says: "We have a positive identification and more data: fingerprint tests show that the body is that of Jay Slater and that the death was caused by trauma consistent with a fall in a rocky area."
The TSJC have also said that the full autopsy results will be delayed due to the “state of decomposition” of the body, on which his identification documents were also found.
The tragic conclusion to Slater's disappearance came yesterday when his body was located by the Mountain Rescue Team (GREIM) of the Guardia Civil. The body was found near the last known signal from his mobile phone deep in a ravine in the challenging terrain of the Masca Valley. The GREIM undertook a strenuous operation to recover the body from the site.
The body was found by specialist Mountain Rescue teams on the 29th day of searching since Jay went missing on the morning of June 17th following a night out in Las Americas as part of the NRG music festival.
The area where his body was found was not far from where his mobile phone gave his location before running out of battery, but not at road level, instead several hundred metres down in a deep ravine under dense undergrowth.
The police search, led by the Guardia Civil, meticulously searched the area at road and trail level in Masca and Teno Rural Park for two weeks, assisted by sniffer dogs, drones and helicopters. They then requested the assistance of volunteers with mountain rescue experience and experience of the terrain, before seemingly calling off the search.
In actual fact this was to allow them to continue in peace down in the valleys as the terrain is demanding and dangerous, so they didn’t want members of the public following them, and progress on foot in these areas is slow in local temperatures exceeding 40°C.
This search in secrecy is what has led to the discovery of a body with Jay Slater's clothes and possessions yesterday morning. After the discovery, the Guardia Civil guarded the corpse until they had judicial authority to remove it, and a helicopter crew airlifted it from the ravine to be taken for official identification and an autopsy to confirm the cause of death.
