Jury cannot be reassured over officer’s Noah Donohoe search claims, inquest told

A jury cannot be reassured by a police officer’s claim that nothing could have been done differently in the search for Noah Donohoe, a barrister for his mother has told an inquest.

Brenda Campbell KC challenged an account given by Sergeant Hutchings, who was the lead Polsa (police search adviser) in the search for Noah in 2020, that the teenager could not have been found any sooner.

Mr Hutchings had earlier told the court he believes Noah’s body would never have been found if he had not decided to start a search of underground water tunnels in 2020.

The inquest into the death of the schoolboy at Belfast Coroner’s Court, which is being heard with a jury, is now in its sixth 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 drowning.

Representing Fiona Donohoe at the inquest, Ms Campbell questioned the officer on his actions after he took on responsibility for the search for Noah on the morning of Monday, June 22, the day after the teenager had gone missing.

She pointed out that there had been no “investigative developments” in the search between 11.30am and Mr Hutchings going off duty that evening, when he was replaced by another Polsa.

That evening, police received a call about Noah’s bike which brought them to Northwood Road, close to the culvert in Northwood Linear Park.

Mr Hutchings then went to the park when he came on duty on the Tuesday morning.

Ms Campbell asked: “At what time did you spot the storm drain for the first time?

He said: “As soon as I was there.”

She then asked him to explain why his colleagues, who had been on duty the evening before or earlier that morning, had not spotted the culvert.

He said: “I don’t know.”

She said: “You cannot, as you did before lunch, seek to give this jury, and more importantly, Noah’s mother, the reassurance that there was nothing that could have been done differently to get Noah back any sooner when what we are seeing here is a 12-hour delay minimum of Polsas identifying that storm drain as the place that needs to be searched.”

He said: “There was no indication that Noah was in there.”

The barrister asked if the Polsa who had been on duty the night before had told him anything about the culvert in the park.

The officer said he could not remember.

Ms Campbell said: “Noah, a few days later, was found in that culvert, dead, naked.

“Are you really telling us that you don’t remember? You haven’t racked your brains to understand when it was that culvert was first identified to the police?”

The officer said he had asked for the culvert to be searched as soon as he had identified it.

Mr Hutchings told the jury he was not aware until the Friday that part of the tunnel was tidal.

Ms Campbell said: “Does it not horrify you that you didn’t know until the Friday that there was a possibility that this child was in a tunnel that flooded twice a day?”

The officer said he did not need to know that information, which was held by the team searching the tunnel.

Ms Campbell said when a diving team was deployed on Friday, it took them 20 minutes to search 50 metres of tunnel.

The jury heard that a police search team wearing dry suits entered the tunnel on the Saturday during low tide when Noah’s body was discovered.

Earlier, Mr Hutchings had told the inquest that he ordered a team to start searching the tunnel network on the Tuesday, with police divers deployed on Friday.

Declan Quinn, counsel for the coroner, asked if he had considered deploying divers to search the tunnel earlier.

Mr Hutchings said: “The storm drain or the culvert was a very low probability, I did not believe he was in there.

“There was nothing to suggest that Noah was inside that pipe.”

He said the search had to be done so he could be “100% sure” Noah was not in the tunnel.

He said he still believed Noah was in the area, where he had last been seen on the Sunday evening.

He said: “He had to be still somewhere within that area, the number of houses there, somebody had to have seen him and nobody was coming forward to say that they had seen him run, a naked child had run past their window.”

Mr Quinn showed the jury a Polsa log which showed that by the Thursday, police had moved to two possible hypotheses, Noah was missing voluntarily or missing “under the influence of a third party”.

Mr Hutchings said: “We should have found Noah if he was there.

“He should have been within that area when nobody else had seen him.

“When we couldn’t find him it was a case of why are we not finding this boy? Has somebody taken him?”

He added: “I believe the investigative part started looking at known sex offenders in the area.

“That is a separate strand from what I am doing.”

Mr Hutchings told the inquest that police divers were deployed to begin a search from the tunnel outlets on the Friday.

He also said he had wanted to work on the Saturday, the day that Noah’s body was found, but was prevented from doing so because it was a rest day for him.

He said: “This was another Polsa coming in.

“At that point he knew nothing about the case.

“I got a phone call from him asking me to let him know what he needed to do.”

Mr Quinn asked the witness if he stood by his statement to the inquest that the search for Noah had been carried out as “quickly and safely” as possible.

Mr Hutchings said: “When I say as safely as possible that is in reference to the amount of search assets I had to use.

“I can’t put somebody into a pipe and endanger their life, it has to be done as safely and methodically as possible.”

He added: “There is nothing I can see that we could have done differently that could have found Noah any sooner.”

The officer said the fact that Noah’s body had been found meant his mother was able to bury him.

He added: “I have a number of outstanding missing persons that I still haven’t found and I don’t think we are ever going to find.”

Asked if he believed it was possible that Noah may have not been found, he said: “If I had stopped on the Tuesday morning and said that pipe has got a cage around it, I do not need to check it, Noah would still be there.”

He added: “This is the first time I have had any contact with Noah’s family. With the court’s approval, I want to send my heartfelt condolences to them.

“I wanted to find Noah.”

The inquest will resume on Thursday.