Police put ‘significant amount of officers’ on Noah Donohoe search, inquest told

Police dedicated a “significant amount of officers” to search for Noah Donohoe in the days after the schoolboy went missing, an inquest has heard.

A police witness told Belfast Coroner’s Court that he believed the high risk level of the case was recognised quickly.

The inquest into the death of the schoolboy, which is being heard with a jury, has now entered its ninth week.

Noah, a pupil at St Malachy’s College, was 14 when his naked body was found in a storm drain tunnel in north Belfast in June 2020, six days after he left home on his bike to meet two friends in the Cavehill area of the city.

A post-mortem examination found the cause of death was likely to be drowning.

The inquest resumed on Monday morning with evidence from Inspector Bell, who was a sergeant in June 2020 and had been involved in the investigation to find Noah.

Inspector Bell told the inquest he had been carrying out inquiries in Northwood Road on Tuesday June 23, two days after Noah had gone missing.

He said he had observed CCTV footage in the morning on a mobile phone of a youth cycling naked in the area.

The officer told the jury that the previous day, he was the morning duty sergeant in Lisburn Road police station when he was told by an inspector he would be co-ordinating the investigation.

He said: “On the Monday there were a lot of actions that needed to be delegated and co-ordinated and different updates coming in.

“When I come on duty I want to be fully aware of the investigation.”

Counsel to the coroner, Peter Coll, asked the witness if there was a “checklist” of things he was checking.

The officer said he worked off a template but added extra actions “tailored to the individual investigation”.

He said there were two sergeants on duty on the Monday. He said one looked after other duties while he concentrated on the Noah search because “we both recognised the significant risk”.

He added: “We certainly did allocate a significant amount of officers to this investigation.

“When you look at the timeline of my emails and my phone calls, you can see this investigation had me dedicated to it.”

“The risk, I believe, was recognised very quickly.”

He said police dealt with missing person investigations on the majority of days.

Inspector Bell said the Cavehill area had been checked overnight by air support and there was “no new information” that further searches were required.

He said: “We had no information to say that Noah was definitely in Cavehill, it was one of our hypothesis.

“He had plans to go there, however, those plans were cancelled.”

Mr Coll asked the witness about how the search progressed on the Monday, including the police’s use of CCTV and TLU (telecoms liaison unit) evidence.

The officer said: “I think it is important to mention this was in the middle of Covid, so there wasn’t a lot of people moving about.

“All of the officers were aware of Noah’s picture, that he was on a bike. We also had city centre CCTV operators looking for him as well.”

He added: “We have to prioritise police resources to where we are most likely to get results, that could be friends or family, he might be at a friend’s house, a family member’s house, we were checking those addresses.

“One hypothesis was he had just woken up, he might have slept rough somewhere.”

Mr Bell said: “This is probably the densest area of the country we are looking at where he could have gone any direction.

“Cavehill was one possible direction but he could have gone anywhere.”

Mr Coll next asked the witness about the CCTV he had viewed when he went to Northwood Road on the Tuesday morning.

Mr Bell said he could not recall exactly what was in the footage, but said he was aware there were three cameras at number 85.

Mr Coll said one of the cameras faced onto the back garden of the property, showing a fence and into the wooded area where the culvert which Noah entered.

Coroner Mr Justice Rooney asked the witness: “Are you saying that when you looked at the footage, you saw CCTV footage from the rear of 85?”

Mr Bell said: “Yes, there were three cameras, one on the side, one on the front and one on the rear.”

The jury was then shown CCTV shot more recently by a police officer showing footage from the same camera position.

Later the witness was questioned by Brenda Campbell KC, who represents Noah’s mother Fiona Donohoe in the proceedings, about the state of the investigation when he had come on duty on the Monday morning.

She asked: “What did you have to go on at seven o’clock in the morning in terms of where Noah might have been or where he had gone?”

Mr Bell said: “The information we had for someone who was not on police systems, the majority of that information comes from the family.

“You are looking at the school, friends, places he would go, habits, what plans he had, we also have the CCTV line of inquiry, we have the information from TLU, the phone.

“We had information from the mum, social media posts, officers had spoken to friends.”

After lunch, Ms Campbell asked Mr Bell about why police officers doing a CCTV trawl on the Monday had “missed” footage of Noah cycling past the Grove Leisure Centre the previous day.

She said: “Did it cause you any concern at all that the officers you had tasked on the Monday had somehow failed to pick him up?”

He responded: “I don’t know he passed those cameras.”

The barrister said: “When you realised that Noah was last seen in Northwood Road having been seen on North Queen Street during your shift the previous day, did it cause you any concern that officers had apparently missed him?”

Mr Bell said: “I did not know how he got there.”

The inquest will resume on Tuesday.