A police officer involved in the search for Noah Donohoe in 2020 has said there was “nothing to suggest” the schoolboy had gone into a water tunnel where his body was later found.
Sergeant Hutchings, was the lead Polsa (police search adviser) in the search for Noah, told an inquest he did, however, believe the teenager was still in the area close to where he had last been seen in north Belfast.
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.
Counsel for the coroner Declan Quinn resumed his questioning of Sergeant Hutchings on Wednesday morning.
The barrister asked the witness about when he became aware of a culvert entrance in Northwood Linear Park and how the decision was made to search the tunnel network.
The officer had told the jury on Monday that he had spotted the culvert and decided it needed to be searched because the entrance to it could be opened.
The barrister read to Mr Hutchings evidence given previously to the inquest by Sean McCarry from Community Rescue Service (CRS).
Mr McCarry’s evidence said that from five minutes of arriving at the park on the Monday night, the day after Noah disappeared, he was aware of the culvert as a potential ingress point for Noah.
Mr McCarry’s evidence said that he had phoned Mr Hutchings to tell him about the culvert when he was off duty on Monday night.
Mr Quinn said: “The upshot of all of that, Sergeant Hutchings, is that Mr McCarry has given evidence to the jury that not only did he inform the Polsa of the culvert on the Monday evening, but he informed you particularly, what do you say about that?”
The officer said he remembered getting the call and being told about Noah’s bike being found and a stream in the area.
He said he told Mr McCarry that if any search needed to be done he should contact the officer on duty.
Mr Hutchings said he was not aware that members of CRS had entered the culvert on Monday.
He said he had not been expecting to see such a large culvert when he arrived at the park on Tuesday morning.
He said: “When I got there I walked down the side of the house. That’s when I saw the culvert and the big drain.”
Mr Hutchings was asked if he would have organised an earlier search of the culvert, had he been aware of it on Monday.
He said: “I would have started the ball rolling.”
The officer said that on the Wednesday morning there were a number of areas being searched for Noah, including the storm drain tunnels.
He 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.”
