Noah Donohoe inquest told storm drain ‘could be easily opened’

Noah was 14 when his naked body was found in a storm drain tunnel in north Belfast in June 2020, six days after leaving home on his bike to meet two friends in the Cavehill area of the city. A post-mortem found the cause of death was drowning.

The jury inquest at Belfast Coroner's Court is now in its fifth week.

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, Mr McCarry said the searchers spotted that the grill 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 it needed searching by a confined space trained and equipped team.

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 Mr McCarry in the early evening to say Noah's bicycle was found in Northwood Road.

Mr McCarry said the search team of volunteers is 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”.

Mr McCarry explained the stages of a search. He said that there was an ‘Initial Visual Check’, then an efficient search, then a thorough search, all three of which could happen at the same time.

Due to the importance of survivability for the missing person, “we are pushing through those areas as fast as we can”.

He explained that if the searchers can get over an obstacle such as a fence, they assume the missing person can too.

Mr McCarry also explained how difficult it was to search in wasteland and a park behind the houses on Northwood Road where Noah’s bike was found, due to a stream, fencing and heavy overgrowth. When they saw the culvert “I could not have said at that time definitely Noah had gone down the drain”.

He said that “we wanted to find him alive” but could not ignore the fact of the drain, and “we brought to the attention of police immediately” even though they could not find evidence he had gone down there.

While he “never wanted at any time to think that Noel was in the drain, Mr McCarry said: “I am not saying it wasn't part of my thought process, it was.”

They had a volunteer begin to search the opening to the drain with a line and safety harness but stopped as the gradient became dangerous, for police experts to search. “It’s an extremely dangerous environment,” he said. “You will lose someone else’s life if something goes wrong.”

Mr McCarry said that he would not not have been surprised if police had stopped their search at 200 metres or 300 metres into the drain – Noah was in fact found hundreds of metres further in. “We could be sitting here today not knowing where he was.”

Mr McCarry said that urban searches were actually the most difficult because not only is overgrowth and parkland and streets having to be searched, but so are “garden sheds, coal bunkers, bins”.Asked about the speed and outcome of the police search, Mr McCarry said: “Do I believe everything that was done that could be done? As far as I can see, yes.”

The inquest continues.