The jury at the inquest into the death of Noah Donohoe has been told that the culvert in the area where he disappeared was “unlocked and could be easily opened”.
Noah, a pupil of St Malachy’s College in Belfast, 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 postmortem examination found the cause of death was drowning.
The jury inquest at Belfast Coroner’s Court is now in its fifth week.
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Sean McCarry, the regional commander for the Community Rescue Service (CRS), said a team of trained volunteers were deployed to the Northwood Road area after being alerted that Noah’s bicycle had been discovered.
The area was searched and a culvert was found on waste ground located at the back of some houses.
In his statement, McCarry said the searchers spotted that the grille on the top of it “was unlocked and could be easily opened”.
The volunteers suggested the culvert should be searched as they felt that an adult could pass through it.
He said he made contact and stated it was “easy to get into” the culvert and that it needed to be searched by a team trained and equipped for searching in confined spaces.
[ Ex-officer tells of ‘horrendous’ conditions in tunnel during Noah Donohoe searchOpens in new window ]
He added: “From early on we were aware of this as a potential ingress point as it was possible for one our technicians who was of slim build to pass between the bars.”
At least 100 community search-and-rescue volunteers were called out to the Cavehill area, which had been the initial focus of the search for Noah.
Updated information made the search for the missing youngster “fluid”, the court heard.
It included a call to deploy searchers in the North Queen Street area, where a phone was found.
Police then contacted McCarry in the early evening to say Noah’s bicycle was found in Northwood Road.
McCarry said the search team of volunteers are often called out to Cavehill and are familiar with its dense terrain, which he said included passable areas but “the rest is sometimes like the jungle”.
Earlier, jurors watched a BBC documentary about the work of the search team who tried to find Noah against the backdrop of the Covid lockdown.
It showed the heartwarming response of the north Belfast community who came out of their homes in large numbers in an effort to help find him.
CRS volunteers described the search as “relentless” and with a “real sense of urgency” as bushes, dense thickets and water were searched in the hunt to find the boy.
Noah’s mother, Fiona Donohoe, recalled it was a “horrible” period.
She said: “He got on his bike and I was able to hug him and tell him I loved him.
“I phoned and I knew if he wasn’t answering his phone something wasn’t right.”
– PA
