The lead investigator into the disappearance of Noah Donohoe has stated that it may "never" be known why the 14-year-old entered the storm drain where his body was discovered in 2020. PSNI Detective Chief Inspector Phillips, who oversaw the probe into Noah's disappearance after he had been missing for three days, acknowledged taking "ownership of a number of errors" and described it as "personally difficult" not to have answers for the boy's mother, Fiona Donohoe.
Background of the Case
Noah's naked body was located in a storm drain tunnel in north Belfast in June 2020, six days after he left his home on his bike to meet two friends in the Cavehill area of the city. Mr. Phillips is the 76th witness to give evidence to jurors at the inquest into his death at Belfast Coroner's Court, which is now in its 20th week.
Jurors have heard from officers establishing that CCTV evidence was missed by police, including footage of Noah leaving his home in the early hours of the day he disappeared that was not viewed until 2022. Additionally, footage from a rear-facing camera on a property in the Northwood Drive area, facing the culvert entrance, was never procured.
Evidence and Findings
Police found no evidence of a third party or that Daryl Paul, who previously pleaded guilty to stealing a rucksack containing Noah's laptop and school books, had any interaction with him on the night he disappeared. Three pathologists concluded that Noah's cause of death was drowning and that, given the condition of his lungs, he was alive when he entered the water. They also found no evidence of any cause of death related to direct violence or injuries that would suggest third-party involvement.
Toxicologists concluded there was no evidence Noah had taken alcohol or drugs prior to his death, although this cannot be entirely ruled out as these substances can continue to break down in the body after death. A group of forensic psychiatrists and a psychologist found no psychiatric explanation for his behaviour that night, which included removing his clothes and cycling naked, and that he was not exhibiting signs of suicidal ideation.
Questioning of Lead Investigator
On Wednesday, Mr. Phillips was questioned by counsel for the PSNI, Donal Lunny, on his conclusions about what happened to Noah. The lead investigator agreed with Mr. Lunny's assertions that officials know where, how, and approximately when Noah died, and there is no evidence to "suggest anyone other than he put himself into the culvert." Mr. Phillips also agreed that Noah appeared to know where he was going given his "purposeful cycling."
Mr. Lunny asked: "We know you've unearthed no evidence of third party involvement, but you do not know why Noah went into the culvert. Is that something we might never know the answer to?" Mr. Phillips replied: "Yes."
Mr. Lunny then asked the officer how he feels not having the answers about what happened to Noah. He said: "I particularly can't imagine what Fiona's going through, I can't imagine what the past six years are like, what that week was like, I never want to know what that feels like." He added: "Nothing anyone did was intended to leave her with no answer. I fully accept that we – I – have ownership of a number of errors in this investigation, none of that was intentional, none of that was done with any kind of malice."
He further stated: "It's very professionally difficult to know that you don't have the full picture. It's also very personally difficult." He agreed with Mr. Lunny's assertion that it is "normal to have unanswered questions in an investigation." After highlighting that there are some missing persons cases where a body is never found, Mr. Lunny said: "In this case at least you found the body, you know what caused his death and you've established there is no evidence that was caused by a third party. And the unanswered question is why he was in the culvert." Mr. Phillips replied: "That's correct."
Concluding his questioning, Mr. Lunny reminded the court that the senior officer had expressed "regrets" for failings in relation to CCTV and that he was not able to say why Noah entered the culvert. He asked: "With the benefit of everything you know, is there anything more or anything you reasonably could have done to find Noah sooner?" Mr. Phillips responded: "No."
Criticism from Family's Legal Team
On Tuesday, Brenda Campbell KC, representing Fiona Donohoe, had quizzed Mr. Phillips about police logs from June 25, 2020, where he outlined his then "hypothesis" that "Noah has disappeared of his own accord and he is either on his own or with a third party." Ms. Campbell posited that over the summer of 2020, when Noah's body had been found, this hypothesis "became the only one." She put it to the senior officer on Wednesday: "The reality is that your investigation pursued the child and not the evidence, and in adopting your hypothesis that Noah did this by choice, you failed to find the answer." Mr. Phillips said it was "not a question I can respond to."
Ms. Campbell continued: "You've met Fiona Donohoe and you've learned a lot about her son in the course of the last six years in this inquest. And you understand the enormous privilege and the enormous responsibility it has been to ask so many questions on her behalf in the course of this inquest. But no matter how many questions I ask, at the end of this process she still has no answer and she has to listen to you say over 30 times 'I don't know'." Mr. Phillips said the number was so high because he was asked a number of questions "in succession" that he "can never have an answer to," adding that he had admitted to failings, for example in relation to the CCTV footage from the Northwood Drive property.
Ms. Campbell said Ms. Donohoe and the inquest would be left without answers "not because there isn't an answer. There is an answer but you failed to look for it," she said. Mr. Phillips said: "Yes I did and I apologise for that." "And you failed to find it," she said. The lead investigator replied: "Yes."
Disagreement Over Hypothesis
Earlier in her examination, Ms. Campbell contested that Mr. Phillips "pursued a hypothesis that blamed a child, that he did this by choice." "I disagree with the phrase I blamed him," he said. Ms. Campbell then clarified that he "pursued a hypothesis that Noah did this by choice." He replied: "Yes, that is where I felt the evidence and information took us."
Ms. Campbell referred to "all the evidential opportunities that flowed from" the footage of Noah leaving his home the night before his disappearance that was not viewed until January 2022. She put it to Mr. Phillips: "Your position is 'we should have (viewed it) but it was a note about Fiona Donohoe's 'squeaky doors' that give us the assurance we didn't need it'." Mr. Phillips said: "Yes, and I'm not putting any blame on Fiona at all, it was an investigative failure on my part," adding "I took the account that he didn't leave the house because of his obedience to rules and time."
The jurors also heard as Ms. Campbell listed a number of areas that the next of kin contest were "failings that we say contributed to Noah's death or failure to find him alive." She said this included the failure to use telelocation data to get to the Northwood Road area where the culvert is located on Sunday night or Monday, "failure to identify the culvert" as a place Noah might be, "serious delay in commencing and the conducting the search of that culvert," as well as "failure to deploy appropriate resources in light of that danger." She put it to Mr. Phillips "you challenged and you changed nothing" about the search, to which he said "no," and then "you didn't challenge and you didn't change the deployment of specialist resource." Mr. Phillips said: "No, I asked the question but I didn't suggest they were going too slowly."
Defence of Colleagues
When being asked about further failings to recover CCTV footage, Mr. Phillips defended PSNI colleagues. He said it was his job as SIO to "drive the investigation to, yes, ensure the information they had was correct and in some cases that didn't work" and "there were some failings and I've apologised for that," but added that is "not to say people involved in this were incompetent, they were good detectives for many years." He said detectives and officers involved in Noah's investigation have worked on "many many instances, many crimes, other cases that have all worked out very well so, yes, we made mistakes but they're not incompetent individuals." "None of this was done deliberately; it was just human error," he said.
Wednesday was the 73rd day of the inquest which has heard or taken evidence from a total of 117 people.
