Final Jay Slater inquest hearing into death of Brit teen in Tenerife begins today after disappearance gripped the world
THE inquest into Jay Slater's death today 11 months after the British teenager vanished in Tenerife is being held today.
The 19-year-old's body was found in a ravine in the remote Rural de Teno National Park last July after an agonising 29-day search.
Apprentice bricklayer Jay flew to the Spanish island last June to attend the NRG music festival in Playa de las Americas with friends.
The teen travelled to an Airbnb apartment in Masca with two men in the early hours of June 17, before leaving at around 8am.
Jay, of Oswaldtwistle, Lancs, decided to attempt the treacherous 25-mile walk back to his apartment in Los Cristianos.
He called his pal Lucy at 8.50am saying he had cut his leg, was lost and dehydrated and had just one per cent battery on his phone.
His mobile last pinged in the mountainous Rural de Teno Park after Jay walked the wrong way from the Airbnb.
Jay's disappearance sparked widespread media interest - as well as a slew of social media conspiracy theories.
After a month-long search, Jay's body was found in a ravine on July 15 last year, near to where his phone last pinged.
A post-mortem examination concluded he died of traumatic head injuries, consistent with a fall from height.
As Jay's body was returned to Lancashire for his funeral, Lancashire's Senior Coroner Dr James Adeley opened an inquest, and the final hearing is taking place today.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
BBC News
28 minutes ago
- BBC News
Colin Flatt: Footballer's daughter frustrated by inquest delay
The daughter of a former professional footballer, who died in 2021, said she was "very disappointed" that an inquest into his death had been adjourned for a further 14 Flatt - who played for Southend United, Leyton Orient and Barnet in the 1960s and 70s - died in September 2021, aged eight-day inquest into his death commenced on 9 June, but assistant coroner Tina Harrington ruled that, for legal reasons, it should be heard in front of a jury, with the soonest available date being August Taylor, daughter of Mr Flatt, told Essex Coroner's Court that "words fail me" after the adjournment was announced. 'Reluctant' decision Mr Flatt was described as "forever a Shrimper" in a tribute from the Southend United Ex-Players Association, which said that he scored eight goals in 24 appearances during the 1966-67 also walked out at Wembley in the FA Trophy for Barnet in 1972, and played for other clubs including Taylor expressed her frustration as the inquest into her father's death was delayed for more than a the assistant coroner, she asked: "Is the jury going to make a difference? I don't know. Will the outcome be different to what you would have ruled? I don't know.""It was a delay which could have been avoided."Ms Harrington told Mrs Taylor, "I can only apologise", adding that her decision to adjourn had been a "reluctant" one. Mr Flatt's partner of 20 years, Melanie Leahy, has been one of the driving forces behind the establishment of the Lampard Inquiry into more than 2,000 mental health deaths in Essex between 2000 and 2012, Ms Leahy's son Matthew, 20, died while he was under the care of NHS mental health services in the inquest into Mr Flatt's death is set to resume on 17 August 2026. Follow Essex news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
BBC News
14 hours ago
- BBC News
Frederick Forsyth: Life as a thriller writer, fighter pilot, journalist and spy
Frederick Forsyth, who has died at the age of 86, wrote meticulously researched thrillers which sold in their millions.A former fighter pilot, journalist and spy, many of his books were based on his own wove intricate technical details into his stories, without detracting from the lightning pace of his research often embarrassed the authorities, who were forced to admit that some of the shady tactics he revealed were used in real-life espionage. Frederick McCarthy Forsyth was born on 25 August 1938 in Ashford, Kent. The only child of a furrier, he dealt with loneliness by immersing himself in adventure his favourites were the works John Buchan and H Rider Haggard, but Forsyth adored Ernest Hemingway's book on bullfighters, Death in the was so captivated that - at the age of 17 - he went to Spain and started practising with a cape. He never actually fought a bull. Instead, he spent five months at the University of Granada before returning to do his national service with the spent years dreaming of becoming a pilot, Forsyth lied about his age so he could fly de Havilland Vampire 1958, he joined the Eastern Daily Press as a local journalist. Three years later, he moved to the Reuters news Tonbridge School, Forsyth had excelled in foreign languages but little else. Fluent in French, German, Spanish, and Russian, he was a born foreign correspondent. Posted to Paris, he covered a number of stories relating to assassination attempts on the life of France's President Charles de Gaulle, by members of the Organisation de l'Armee Secrete (OAS).The group of ex-army personnel were angered at de Gaulle's decision to give independence to Algeria after many of their comrades had died fighting Algerian called the OAS "white colonialists and neo-fascists".And he decided that, if they really wanted to kill de Gaulle, they would have to hire a professional assassin. Forsyth joined the BBC in 1965. Two years later, he was sent to Nigeria to cover the civil war that followed the secession of the south-eastern region of the fighting dragged on far longer than had been expected, Forsyth asked permission to stay and cover it. According to his autobiography, the BBC told him "it is not our policy to cover this war"."I smelt news management," he said. "I don't like news management." He quit his job and continued to cover the war as a freelance reporter for the next two chronicled his experiences in The Biafra Story, which was published in 1969. He later claimed that, while in Nigeria, he began working for MI6, a relationship that continued for two decades. He also become friendly with a number of mercenaries, who taught him how to get a false passport, obtain a gun and break an enemy's these tricks of the trade would be incorporated in a tale of an attempted assassination of President de Gaulle, The Day of the Jackal, which he pounded out in his bedsit on an old typewriter in just 35 spent months trying to get it published but faced a string of rejections. "For starters, de Gaulle was still alive," he said, "so readers already knew a fictional assassination plot set in 1963 couldn't succeed."Eventually, a publisher risked a short print run and sales of the book, described once as "an assassin's manual", took off, first in the UK and then in the US. The Day of the Jackal showcased what would become the traditional hallmarks of a Forsyth thriller. It wove together fact and fiction, often using the names of real individuals and Jackal's forgery of a British passport, using the name of a dead child taken from a churchyard, was perfectly feasible in the days before electronic databases and tale was made into an award-winning film in 1973, staring Edward Fox as the anonymous gunman. Forsyth followed up his success with The Odessa File, the story of a German reporter attempting to track down Eduard Roschmann - a notorious Nazi nicknamed the "Butcher of Riga" - who is protected by a secret society of former SS men known as part of his research, Forsyth travelled to Hamburg posing as a South African arms dealer. "I managed to penetrate their world and was feeling rather proud of myself," he later said."What I didn't know was that the (contact) had passed a bookshop shortly after our meeting. And there, in the window, was The Day of the Jackal, with a great big picture of me on the back cover."The film of the book led to the identification of the real "Butcher of Riga", who was living in Argentina - after one of his neighbours went to see it at the local cinema. He was arrested by the Argentinian authorities, but skipped bail and fled to book also mentioned a hoard of Nazi gold that was exported to Switzerland in 1944. Twenty-five years after publication, the Jewish World Congress discovered this passage and, eventually, located gold valued at £1bn. According to the Sunday Times, Forsyth's third novel, The Dogs of War, drew on his experience of organising a coup in newspaper reported that Forsyth had once spent $200,000 hiring a boat and recruiting European and African soldiers of fortune for a raid designed to oust the President of Equatorial Guinea in plan was said to have failed when the arrangements broke down and the soldiers were intercepted by the Spanish police in the Canary Islands, 3,000 miles from their came Devil's Alternative, in which Britain's first female prime minister, Joan Carpenter, was firmly based on Margaret Thatcher, a politician Forsyth greatly admired. She later appeared, under her real name, in four Forsyth was a move into biography in 1982 with Emeka, the life story of Forsyth's friend Col Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, the head of state of Biafra during that country's brief independence. In 1984, he returned to the novel with The Fourth Protocol: a complex tale of a Soviet plot to influence the British general election and install a hard-left Labour book so impressed Sir Michael Caine that he persuaded Forsyth to allow a film version, in which the veteran actor starred alongside Pierce the late 1980s, Forsyth separated from his first wife, the former model Carole Cunningham and was photographed alongside the actress Faye Negotiator, published in 1991, continued the successful run while The Deceiver, the tale of a maverick but brilliant MI6 agent, was made into a BBC two more thrillers, The Fist of God and Icon, Forsyth took an abrupt detour with The Phantom of Manhattan: a sequel to the Phantom of the Opera, which had been a successful was not a great success but, in 2010, Andrew Lloyd Webber took elements of it for his musical follow-up to Phantom, Love Never Dies. A second set of short stories, The Veteran, also had mixed reviews but Forsyth bounced back in his usual style with Avenger, a 2003 political thriller and, three years later, The Afghan, which had links with the earlier Fist of now, Forsyth had established a reputation as a broadcaster and political pundit. He was a frequent guest on the BBC's topical debate programme Question Time, as someone who held views on the right of the political spectrum.A committed Eurosceptic, he once derailed former Prime Minister Ted Heath on the programme - after proving that he had indeed, despite his denials, once signed a document agreeing to transfer UK gold reserves to Frankfurt. On turning 70, the pace of his writing began to slow. The Cobra, published in 2010, saw the return of some of the characters from 2013, Forsyth published The Kill List, a fast-moving tale built round a Muslim fanatic called The Preacher, whose online videos encouraged young Muslims to carry out a series of wrote all his books on a typewriter and refused to use the internet for his research. Ironically, his 18th novel, The Fox - published in 2018 - was a spy thriller about a gifted computer announced it was to be his final book, but he later came out of self-imposed retirement after the death of his second wife, Sandy, in said he was writing another adventure, and even suggested a raffle might give someone the chance to name a character after sold the film rights for £20,000 in the 1970s, Forsyth received no payment for Eddie Redmayne's version of The Day of the Jackal when it was re-imagined for television last year on into his 80s, he had long since agreed to stop research trips to far-flung parts of the world - when a trip to Guinea-Bissau left him with an infection that nearly cost him a leg."It is a bit drug-like, journalism," he admitted. "I don't think that instinct ever dies."It was an instinct that made his life as full and exciting as his thrillers.
BBC News
15 hours ago
- BBC News
Daughter of Ian Paterson patient: 'My mum was robbed of a life with her family'
A woman who was operated on by jailed surgeon Ian Paterson was "robbed of a life with her husband and children," an inquest has Cordon, who lived in Kingstanding, Birmingham, was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 33 and died six years later in November death is one of 63 to be examined at inquests, to determine whether she died an unnatural death as a result of Paterson's a statement read by the coroner, Judge Richard Foster, Mrs Cordon's daughter Bernice Cordon described her as "the bravest, most caring woman to walk this earth". "She had a heart full of love and a belly full of fire," she said."She was the life and soul of the party. Even in the last few days she was putting everything before herself."Ms Cordon said her mother enjoyed her job at Good Hope Hospital, but that her passion was always her family, particularly her children."She gave us all the attention we needed, no matter how dark her days were with illness," her statement read."It was her worst fear too. As time came on, it became apparent she would be leaving the one thing she lived for." Ms Cordon said her mother's relationship with her father was incredible."She was robbed of a life with her husband and children," her statement said."She will never know what growing old feels like or to be a grandmother."Yvonne Cordon, whose maiden name was Miles, was born in Northern Ireland on 11 July 1961, with Judge Foster reflecting that she would have grown up during The Troubles. Video-link evidence The inquest heard that she was a patient at Good Hope Hospital, an NHS hospital in Sutton Coldfield, after being referred to Ian Paterson by her GP due to a lump being found in her tissue and five lymph nodes were later removed, which led to a diagnosis of grade-three breast carcinoma, which had spread to one of the lymph nodes. The cancer later spread to her bones and lungs. She underwent six rounds of chemotherapy, as well as radiotherapy, and was prescribed a hormone therapy drug called Tamoxifen. Ian Paterson was due to give evidence via video-link on Monday but was unable to, with the inquest told there were internet connection issues at the was sentenced to 20 years in jail in 2017, after being convicted of wounding patients with botched and unnecessary operations, but will be eligible for release in inquest continues. Follow BBC Birmingham on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.
