One of the first people to fly out to Tenerife to help join the search for Jay Slater fears there are still unanswered questions surrounding his fatal fall.
The 19-year-old disappeared in Tenerife in June 2024 after visiting the island for the NRG music festival.
Lost, dehydrated and confused the apprentice bricklayer told his friend he was ‘not going to make it’ in a heartbreaking final Snapchat message – only delivered after his death.
He was later found to have fallen and cracked his skull in a ravine while walking down from the mountain village of Masca to the sea to get help.
(Pictures: Facebook / Channel 4)
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Callum Fahim saw a viral Facebook post from Jay’s friends asking for help and booked himself on the first flight from London to the island to help join the search.
He told Metro about the chaos of the initial search with the clock ticking and blistering temperatures as he plotted routes through the dense cacti fields he sought to find Jay alive in.
The hiker, surviving on Doritos and Appletiser, joined concerned locals to comb unexplored outhouses, abandoned shelters and ravines.
He said: ‘I asked a lot of questions.’
He claimed he was brushed off and ignored and believes if the volunteers searching had been listened to, they probably would have found Jay sooner.
‘I feel like there’s so much more that’s just been covered up,’ he said.
Debbie, Jay’s mother, had praised Callum’s efforts to find her son, even promising him money from the controversial fundraiser.
She spoke for the first time since his death in a Channel 4 documentary, The Disappearance of Jay Slater, which aired on Sunday.
One of the strands the documentary explored was the thousands of online ghouls tormenting Jay’s mum and family.
Jay’s fundraiser seemed to send the online conspiracies into overdrive with the disturbing disappearance becoming a meme – the butt of sick online jokes.
TikTok sleuths theorised the £30,000 target set by his friend was actually a ransom set by narco kingpins who had kidnapped Jay for some fictional drug theft.
Another tells his followers that ‘verified’ footage showed the teenager being ‘tortured’ – a claim that was also subsequently rubbished.
Debbie told Channel 4: ‘I just wanted to believe anything, to think that he was still alive.’
Despite a coroner ruling out any third-party involvement in the death, Callum thinks conspiracy theorists will not let up as they continue to seek social media likes and to torment his family.
‘I don’t think they will stop because they simply don’t care about what they are doing.
‘It was only yesterday one of them said she wouldn’t do any more videos and then, boom, today she’s pushing an agenda again.’
Fahim, who documented his own searches on TikTok, said it was still a mystery how Jay ended up in that ravine.
‘I believe more did happen, and there are more answers out there.
‘Do I think they will ever get the answers? No, but that doesn’t mean I don’t pray that one day people will start to come clean.’
Despite failing to find Jay and leaving the island after he felt unsafe, Callum said: ‘I don’t regret going to help.
‘I’m disappointed all of the armchair detectives are still coming out swinging.
‘Half of the people that are speculating couldn’t be bothered to go there to search but they have the time and energy to push false narratives from their armchairs.’
Senior coroner Dr James Adeley ruled Jay had fallen in a ‘particularly dangerous area in difficult terrain’.
He said: ‘He fell approximately 20 to 25 metres, suffering skull fractures and brain trauma from which he would have died instantaneously. Jay Dean Slater died an accidental death.
‘This is a tragic death of a young man.’
Jay left the road as temperatures rose that day, the coroner added.
The pathologist who examined his body when it arrived back in the UK, Dr Richard Shepherd, tells the documentary the teenager was killed almost certainly instantly having suffered a ‘massive, massive skull fracture’.
He adds: ‘The one thing I can’t rule out is that Jay was pushed at the top of a slope just as I can’t rule out whether someone has fallen down stairs on their own or is pushed down the stairs, because the push will leave no marks.’
With interest in the case still at fever pitch Callum said he hoped the inquest would finally bring the family peace.
‘I want to remember Jay as the boy who vanished in Tenerife, as the boy who touched the hearts of the nation.
‘He was going on a holiday of a lifetime but it turned out to be the holiday from hell.
‘I just pray he’s at peace and I hope for the sake of his immediate family they they are left alone and can find a way to be able to heal.
‘My thoughts are with the Slaters, I want them to try to ignore the armchair detectives and I hope they are finding peace and comfort in knowing that Jay is finally at rest.
‘I’m just sorry we didn’t get the outcome we all wished for.’
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