Drain where Noah Donohoe was found was in good condition, inquest hears

The storm drain where Noah Donohoe’s body was discovered was in good condition and had no history of unauthorised access, the inquest into the teenager’s death has heard.

Noah, a pupil at St Malachy’s College, was 14 when his naked body was found in a water tunnel in north Belfast on June 27 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 likely cause of death was drowning.

Jonathan McKee, a director in the Department for Infrastructure (DFI), appeared at the inquest, which is in its 14th week, on Thursday morning.

He said the drain was “relatively uncomplicated for a culvert in an urban area” and “was and is in good condition”.

Much of Mr McKee’s evidence focused on a screen covering the opening of the culvert.

He said before June 2020, the DFI had “no record of members of the public or elected representatives reporting concerns” about the safety of a screen on the structure’s opening, or about children or adults gathering at it.

There was no other evidence such as graffiti or litter to suggest the pipe had been accessed, he added and said local residents are “vigilant and alert”, which would discourage unauthorised access and anti-social behaviour.

Mr McKee said it was not “an abandoned area of land, out of everyone’s view, susceptible to misuse or antisocial behaviour”.

On June 24 2020, after Noah’s disappearance, there was a report of unauthorised access to the drain.

An official was tasked with investigating and when he arrived he was told “approximately 50 to 60 youths” had “forced entry” to the area around the culvert opening and had searched the area, Mr McKee said.

The official discovered the lock on a gate from the park to the area had been cut by “something like an angle grinder”. The court was shown a picture of the cut lock and an image of where it was found upstream from the inlet screen.

He replaced the lock on the gate and also put a lock on the inlet screen access hatch.

He said the use of screens is typically discouraged as they can become blocked, creating a flood risk, and there is also a safety risk if anyone was to fall into water and become trapped by a screen.

He said when they are used, there are two different types: a security screen or a debris screen, with more widely spaced bars.

The screen on the Premier Drive Stream inlet had been changed from a debris screen to a security screen after Noah’s death because of the installation of new valves in the culvert.

“It is important to be absolutely clear the installation of security screens was not as a result of Noah’s death,” Mr McKee said.

Counsel for the coroner Peter Coll questioned Mr McKee about whether there was a lock on the screen in June 2020.

Mr McKee said in January 2020 there was a report there was “no lock on the hatch”.

He added: “We can’t say for certain if it was locked in the intervening period between January 2020 and June 2020, we know for certain that it wasn’t on the 24th of June.”

He pointed out there are risks associated with locking debris screens that need to be weighed up.

He said an unlocked debris screen “allows a means of escape” and can help with the process of draining water during flooding.

However, he said since Noah’s death more people have been visiting the culvert and other similar sites because “the issue of the hatch being unlocked” was “featuring in the media”.

Mr McKee said “members of the public were starting to visit sites to see whether hatches were locked or not”, and the department was “concerned about copycat incidents”.

He said as a result and as an “interim precautionary measure”, all screens are now locked.

“We’re tolerating that increased risk in the short term, but it’s my firm expectation that that decision will be reviewed in the very near future,” he said.

He said when it came to managing access to drains three risk factors need to be weighed up against each other: the risk to people if they get into the pipe, the danger of flooding and the chance of someone being trapped against the screen.

“You’re not going to be able to solve all three of those equations and get them all down to zero. So you have to start balancing the risk,” he said.

He later described the tunnel as “an environment with quite a few risks in it, and those risks probably increase the further down into the culvert you go”.

When being questioned by PSNI lawyer Donal Lunny, Mr McKee described some of the other dangers found within the culvert, including pockets of gas which can build up in silt.

Mr McKee’s evidence will continue on Friday and Brenda Campbell, counsel to Noah’s mother Fiona Donohoe said the court would look at how the DFI “weighed” the hazards in the culvert.

She said: “The hazard was for anybody who gained access to that culvert, particularly for children, the ultimate hazard was death.”