Jay Slater’s grieving mum has said she is haunted by a fateful decision she made after seeing a Snapchat post he made before he vanished. The body of the 19-year-old apprentice bricklayer from Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire, was found at the bottom of a ravine in Tenerife in July 2024 after a huge, month-long search.

Mum, Debbie Duncan, has retraced his steps for a Channel 5 series, Cause of Death, returning to the island where her beloved son died. In the documentary, Ms Duncan remembers seeing Jay‘s Snapchat post and thinking at the time: “Why did you not ring me?” She then asks herself: “Why did I not ring him when I saw his Snapchat that morning?”

Ms Duncan adds: “Nobody knew what was going to happen. I need to stop feeling guilty about that. It’s really hard.”

Jay’s mum returned to the same place in Tenerife where he went missing, retracing the route he is understood to have taken.

In the programme, Ms Duncan reveals a question which has haunted her since Jay’s death: Why he didn’t turn back and return to the road?

After seeing the terrain, she concludes her son must have been so scared and thought he couldn’t turn back.

Jay had been at a nightclub in Playa de las Americas before travelling to an Airbnb in the Masca area of northern Tenerife with two men he met.

He left the property on June 17, 2024, calling pals to say his phone was running out of battery and he didn’t have any water.

An inquest found Jay died instantly from injuries he suffered in a fall.

The documentary shows Ms Duncan breaking down as she lays flowers near where Jay left the road, according to The Sun.

She imagines what her son would say to her if he could, telling the programme makers: “I know he’d be so sorry for the mistakes he made. He’d be saying, ‘I’m so sorry, Mum’.”

Cause of Death is on Channel 5 at 9pm on Wednesday (September 30).