An inquest into the death of a teenager whose body was found in a Belfast storm drain has found there is not enough evidence to explain the puzzling circumstances of how he died, partly due to mistakes by police investigators. Noah Donohoe, 14, was last seen on 21 June 2020 when he left his south Belfast home on his bicycle, telling his mother he was going to visit friends. His naked body was found six days later, deep inside an underground water tunnel in the north of the city.
The case provoked huge interest in Northern Ireland, with intense speculation on social media over how and why he died, and concerns raised about the police handling of the case. A postmortem in 2020 found that Noah died by drowning. The inquest jury had heard eyewitness and CCTV evidence that Noah had been seen cycling through Belfast in the afternoon and early evening of Sunday 21 June, at one point falling from his bike, and apparently abandoning items of clothing and possessions as he went.
He was eventually seen cycling naked, and was captured on CCTV abandoning his black Apollo mountain bike and making his way in the direction of a stream that led to the storm drain. A jury at Belfast coroners’ court found no failings by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) that may have contributed to the teenager’s death after unanimously agreeing that he died before he was reported missing. However, they identified a series of 13 failures by investigators that they said had affected their ability to reach conclusions on its circumstances.
These included a failure to secure some CCTV evidence, to follow up leads relating to Noah’s green coat, which has never been recovered, and to take relevant statements in a reasonable timeframe. Jurors said the overall house-to-house search strategy for Noah was “poorly” executed, managed and recorded. They found that some statements were not taken within a reasonable timeframe and the quality of entries in police notebooks was poor.
In addition, there had been delays in identifying and searching the storm drain. The inquest found it was possible, but not probable, that mistakes in the management of the storm drain by the Northern Ireland assembly’s Department for Infrastructure had contributed to Noah’s death. No warning signs were erected at the location and it was closed off only by a debris screen that did not prevent access.
Fiona Donohoe, Noah’s mother, had told the inquest that her son had been uncharacteristcally emotional and affectionate in the days before his disappearance, and that she had had fears over his mental health, having found him crying in his bedroom. She said her son had become fixated on the controversial Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson; one of Peterson’s books, 12 Rules for Life, was in Noah’s backpack along with his laptop when he left home. Friends and teachers described an intelligent, funny and musical child who had been a popular high-achiever at school.
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