Conspiracy theories hampering search for missing Jay Slater'

As the search for Jay Slater, the British teenager who went missing while on holiday in Tenerife, enters its second week Spanish rescuers continue to comb the rugged mountain terrain where he was last seen for clues.

- Hannah Al-Othman

Staff and volunteers from the local police, fire brigade and civil defence force have been using dogs, drones and helicopters to hunt for 19-yearold from Lancashire.

But more than 2,000 miles away in Britain, a group of online sleuths are conducting their own operations, scouring Google maps of the area where he disappeared in the Rural de Teno national park and posting baseless conspiracy theories, and, in some cases, even cruel deliberate hoaxes about his disappearance.

Slater's family and friends have said the interest the case has generated online is compounding their distress in what is already the one of the most difficult situations a parent could imagine. And they fear the online "noise" around the case could even hamper the investigation.

Slater's last known contact with those close to him was when he phoned a friend called Lucy who had been at the same music festival but left before him. He told her that his phone battery was on 1%, that he was thirsty, lost and that he had cut his leg on a cactus.