Heartbreaking to consider what Noah experienced, witness tells inquest

A police officer who searched an underground tunnel for Noah Donohoe became emotional at the inquest on Wednesday when he considered the conditions the schoolboy would have encountered after he disappeared five and a half years ago.

The 14-year-old schoolboy's body was found in a tunnel in north Belfast almost a week after he went missing in June 2020.

A former PSNI inspector, Philip Menary, was part of a hazardous environment police team involved in the underground search.

Giving evidence at the inquest about the conditions he encountered as he made his way along the tunnel towards a point close to the Seaview football pitch, he said it was "heartbreaking" to consider what Noah experienced.

Menary described the "complete blackness" his team encountered, amid debris including branches and boulders and other obstructions in washing water.

He described how it would be "exhausting" trying to "figure and feel" a way through the tunnel.

He explained how a person could be constantly tripping over debris and obstructions and at times having to go "on all fours" to try to get through the tunnel.

He said it would be "completely disorientating" and someone could stumble and fall with water "continually coming over you".

The former police officer became emotional and paused momentarily at this point as he reflected on "young Noah".

"It's heartbreaking," he said.

He described as "horrendous" the tunnel conditions under the Seaview football pitch, which is downstream from where Noah was seen naked close to the entrance to a storm drain at Linear Park.

Describing the sludge and silt in the tunnel area where Noah's body was eventually found, close to the M2 motorway, he said it "just sucks your feet under" in "absolutely freezing" conditions.

Commenting on a photograph of the tunnel shown to the coroner, Mr Justice Rooney, and the jury, he said it was "completely pitch black".

He said his team experienced "a real sense of sadness" when Noah's body was found because they understood what he had gone through, and they knew "the steps" the schoolboy had taken.

He said they thought about Noah being alone and naked in the dark.

Responding to a barrister for the coroner, the witness told the inquest that his team was not engaged in an operation to recover a body when they began their search three days after Noah went missing.

He also said that remained the position the following morning - Thursday - four days after Noah disappeared.

He explained: "There was no evidence Noah had ever gone down that drain."

He said the search was being carried out at that stage to see if there was "anything strange or out of the ordinary " in the culvert.

The witness also explained details of the challenges the underground search team encountered in the tunnel as they were "crawling" along the bottom.

It eventually reached a point, downwards from Linear Park, beside the Seaview football ground where they could proceed no further because of a "considerable level of sludge" and "potentially noxious gases" in the silt.

He described how his search team's operation was conducted in a "quite claustrophobic" conditions and the tunnel was "freezing cold", even while wearing protective clothing.

Asked what the experience might be like for someone who was not wearing any clothes, the witness said it would have been "absolutely horrendous" and they would have been "absolutely frozen".

During questioning from a barrister representing Fiona Donohoe, Noah's mother, the witness said he had not been told the case was related to a "high risk" missing person.

Based on his experience, he assumed it would be "high risk" given it involved a 14-year-old boy who had been missing for two days at that stage.

He also said he had not been told on his first day at the scene that the missing boy was naked.

The witness was questioned about what was described as "any sense of urgency" involved in his team's search for "a naked teenage boy" or "a naked black child" on the day they were called to the scene.

He explained that his team was one of many different teams searching around various locations at the time and he was trying to get their search underway as efficiently as possible bearing in mind various constraints around searches of confined spaces.

The witness was also questioned about perceived delays around their operation in a situation where "every minute counts" and he was asked why it took "five and a half hours", from the time the team arrived on the scene, to request maps relating to the culvert and tunnel.

He accepted that "it was a long time" but the former police inspector explained that their initial task was to search around the culvert entrance to look for any evidence that Noah may have been there.

He said there was no evidence at that point that Noah was around or in the culvert.

He also emphasised that the responsibility of his team was to conduct a search as opposed to a rescue operation.