The mother of missing Jay Slater says she and her family are “absolutely devastated” about the teenager’s disappearance.

The 19-year-old, from Oswaldtwistle in Lancashire, disappeared on 17 June after setting off to walk back to his accommodation while on holiday in Tenerife.

In a statement issued through the British overseas missing persons charity LBT Global, Debbie Duncan said “words cannot describe the pain and agony we are experiencing”.

“Jay is a normal guy who is in his third year of an apprenticeship, and he is a very popular young man with a large circle of friends,” she said.

“We are a very close family and are absolutely devastated about his disappearance.

“Words cannot describe the pain and agony we are experiencing. He is our beautiful boy with his whole life ahead of him and we just want to find him.

“We do not have any information on his whereabouts.”

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Helicopters, drones and search dogs were deployed to find the apprentice bricklayer, who arrived on the island on 13 June for the NRG music festival with two friends.

Ms Duncan praised the Spanish police, who she said had “worked tirelessly up in the mountains where Jay’s last phonecall was traced”.

His last known location was the Rural de Teno Park in the north of the island – which was about an 11-hour walk from his accommodation.

“They [police] conducted a land search for 12 days which involved every resource they had available,” Ms Duncan added.

“Although the land search ended, the Spanish police still continue with their investigations into why Jay had travelled to the location so far away from his accommodation.

“We offer our sincere thanks to the Spanish authorities who continue to follow lines of inquiries.”

On Friday, the Guardia Civil appealed for experts in rugged terrain to assist in a “massive search” on Saturday.

The search in the village of Masca, near his last-known location, took in a steep rocky area, including ravines, trails and paths.

He had travelled to an Airbnb in Masca and the two men said to have rented the property were later ruled “not relevant” to the case.

Read more:
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As the family continues to hope for a breakthrough in investigations, Ms Duncan asked the media to respect their privacy and said they are aware of conspiracy theories.

She said she can only describe the speculation as “vile”, adding the “negative comments are extremely distressing” to the family.

“We also embrace the love and support we have received from across the globe,” she added.

“It has not gone unnoticed, especially his home town in Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire. As a family we would like the world to respect our privacy at this present time.”

A trainee nurse has been found guilty of attempting to launch an ISIS-inspired suicide attack using a homemade bomb on the hospital where he worked.

Mohammad Sohail Farooq, 28, was arrested outside St James’s Hospital in Leeds with a viable bomb, manufactured from a pressure cooker containing 9.9kg of low explosive, in January 2023.

Other items, including two knives, black tape and an imitation firearm with blank ammunition, were also found on him or in his car.

Sheffield Crown Court heard he immersed himself in “extremist Islamic ideology” and went to the site to “seek his own martyrdom” through a “murderous terrorist attack”.

But his plan was thwarted by a “simple act of kindness” from a patient at the hospital who engaged him in conversation outside the building and managed to persuade him to abandon the plan.

A jury convicted him on Tuesday after deliberating for less than two hours.

It can be disclosed that police discovered Farooq had watched antisemitic videos on TikTok and had taken a photograph on his phone of a plaque which commemorated Jewish links to the hospital.

Investigations also revealed he had been carrying out a secret poison pen campaign against several colleagues after he was made to repeat a year of his course because he was regularly ringing in sick and did not pass the required exams.

Farooq had originally planned to attack RAF Menwith Hill in North Yorkshire, but switched targets after conducting a series of reconnaissance trips and finding it was too well guarded.

Prosecutors said Farooq had followed guidance in a terrorist manual titled “safety and security guidelines for lone wolf mujahedeen and small cells” to have two plans for his terrorist attack – a “Plan A”, and a “Plan B” in case the first was not possible.

However, the plot was prevented by Nathan Newby, a patient at the hospital. After returning from a walk to get some air, he saw Farooq outside the entrance to the Gledhow Wing of the hospital.

Jonathan Sandiford KC, for the prosecution, earlier told the court: “Mr Newby realised something was amiss and instead of walking away, he began talking to the defendant.

“That simple act of kindness almost certainly saved many lives that night.”

It came after Farooq had earlier sent a bomb threat in a text to an off-duty nurse in order to lure people to the car park where he was waiting to detonate his device.

However, the text was not seen for almost an hour, and the full-scale evacuation he had hoped for did not happen.

Prosecutors said Farooq left but returned shortly afterwards with a new plan to wait for a staff shift change before exploding his bomb – until he got chatting with Mr Newby.

Mr Newby told police: “I’m quite good at reading people’s body language, I don’t know why, I thought I would go over and see if he’s alright, to try and cheer him up and see why he looks like the way he did – down, depressed and upset, like he had been given some bad news, swaying backwards and forwards.”

They got chatting and for a while they had a “totally normal chat” but then Farooq unzipped the bag to show Newby the pressure cooker and wires. “He said: ‘Do you like that?’ That’s what he said. I thought wow, as if I was looking at what he said was a bomb.”

Newby moved Farooq to a bench away from the hospital entrance and, three hours later, persuaded him to let him call the police.

Afterwards Mr Newby told police: “I was shocked I had managed to talk him out of it. I reached out my hand, I gave him a hug and said mate you’ve done the right thing, to try and keep him calm.

“I thought what would have happened if I had wrestled him to the floor and he got agitated – a lot of what ifs.”

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Farooq did not give evidence during his trial but admitted to police that he had made the bomb while in his car at night, parked outside Roundhay Park in Leeds.

He had earlier pleaded guilty to firearms offences, possessing an explosive substance with intent and having a document likely to be useful to a person preparing or committing an act of terrorism.

On Tuesday he was found guilty of preparing terrorist acts.

Bethan David, head of the Crown Prosecution Service‘s counter terrorism division, said: “Farooq is an extremely dangerous individual who amassed a significant amount of practical and theoretical information that enabled him to produce a viable explosive device.

“He then took that homemade explosive device to a hospital where he worked with the intention to cause serious harm.”

She added: “The extremist views Farooq holds are a threat to our society, and I am pleased the jury found him guilty of his crimes.”

Serial killer nurse Lucy Letby has been found guilty of the attempted murder of an extremely premature baby, just two hours after she was born.

Letby, who was convicted last year of the murder of seven babies and the attempted murder of six others, was found guilty by a jury at a retrial at Manchester Crown Court.

The jury at her original trial had been unable to reach a verdict on the charge that she attempted to murder the premature baby, known as Baby K, at the Countess of Chester Hospital in February 2016.

The prosecution said that Letby had displaced the baby’s breathing tube and had been caught “virtually red-handed” when a doctor walked into the room.

Consultant paediatrician Dr Ravi Jayaram told the jury he saw Letby standing beside the infant’s incubator doing nothing as her blood oxygen levels fell to life-threatening levels.

An alarm that should have been sounding was silent.

After the baby recovered, her tube was displaced two more times that night, the prosecution said, alleging Letby had tried to make it appear like the infant habitually displaced it herself.

The baby, who had been born at 25 weeks’ gestation, was transferred to a specialist neo-natal unit but died three days later.

Letby’s actions were not alleged to have caused her death.

The parents of Child K gasped and then cried when the verdict was read out – after the jury deliberated for just three-and-a-half hours.

Letby showed no emotion in the dock.

Sentencing will take place on Friday at 10.30am.

Senior Crown Prosecutor Nicola Wyn Williams, of CPS Mersey-Cheshire’s Complex Casework Unit, said that Letby has “continually denied that she tried to kill this baby or any of the babies that she has been convicted of murdering or attempting to murder”.

She said: “Our case included direct evidence from a doctor who walked into the nursery to find a very premature baby desaturating with Letby standing by, taking no action to help or to raise the alarm. She had deliberately dislodged the breathing tube in an attempt to kill her.

“Staff at the unit had to think the unthinkable – that one of their own was deliberately harming and killing babies in their care.

“Letby dislodged the tube a further two times over the following few hours in an attempt to cover her tracks and suggest that the first dislodgment was accidental. These were the actions of a cold-blooded, calculated killer.

“The grief that the family of Baby K have felt is unimaginable. Our thoughts remain with them and all those affected by this case at this time,” Ms Wyn Williams added.

Dr Nigel Scawn, medical director at the Countess of Chester Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, said: “Our thoughts are with the family and loved ones of Baby K. We are extremely sorry that these awful crimes happened at our hospital.

“Since Lucy Letby worked at our hospital, we have made significant changes to our services and remain committed to providing high quality safe care to our local communities.

“We want to acknowledge the impact this continues to have on everyone involved in this case and restate our commitment to do everything we can to help families get the answers they deserve.

Dr Scawn also thanked “the unwavering cooperation and professionalism of our staff, some of whom returned to court to repeat evidence and relive events”.

During the retrial, Letby denied that she had ever intended or tried to harm any baby in her care.

She said she had no recollection of the incident with Baby K but said: “I know I did nothing to interfere.”

Letby was asked about Facebook searches she made for Baby K’s surname more than two years after she left the neonatal unit.

She had also searched for the parents of other babies she was convicted of murdering or attempting to murder.

She denied having a fascination with the families or looking for signs of their grief.

She told the jury: “I’m not guilty of what I’ve been found guilty of.”

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Last August, Letby was sentenced to 14 whole life orders after the jury found her guilty at the end of a ten-month trial.

In sentencing at that trial, the judge Mr Justice Goss said she was guilty of a “cruel, calculated and cynical campaign of child murder involving the smallest and most vulnerable of children”.

He added: “There was a deep malevolence bordering on sadism in your actions.”

The motivation for those actions was unclear.

The prosecution told her original trial that she enjoyed “playing God” and was excited by the drama of staff rushing to save the babies she had attacked.

A public inquiry into events at the Countess of Chester Hospital’s neonatal unit will begin to hear evidence in September.