He said the 5% figure did not influence the speed or urgency of the search of the culvert
CCTV shows Noah Donohoe leaving home the night before he went missing
A police search adviser believed there was a 5% possibility that Noah Donohoe was in the culvert in which his body was eventually found, an inquest has heard.
Sergeant Hutchings, who was the lead Polsa (police search adviser) in the search for the 14-year-old in 2020, said there had been no evidence to suggest the schoolboy had entered the underground water tunnel.
The inquest into the death of Noah 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 the 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.
Under questioning from Brenda Campbell KC on Thursday, Mr Hutchings said he would have discussed the stream and pipe in a handover from a colleague when he resumed duty on Tuesday – two days after Noah was last seen.
At this point, the search was focused around Noah’s last sighting in the area around Northwood Road and Northwood Linear Park, where the culvert was located.
Mr Hutchings said his colleague could not have commenced searching the pipe overnight as the confined spaces team would not have been on.
He said the pipe did not need searching “immediately” because they did “not expect him to be in there”, adding there was “nothing to suggest” he had entered the culvert.
He said he assigned a team to examine it but he had “more important things to do” in searching areas where Noah “was more likely to be”.
Ms Campbell, representing Noah’s mother Fiona, asked whether it was a possibility that he was in the pipe.
Mr Hutchings replied: “It proved it was a possibility but at the time we did not expect him to go into that pipe.”
He told the barrister he had not ask his colleague how close he got to the pipe but he had not been told he had heard screams.
Asked about earlier evidence in which a Community Rescue Search member said they were operating on a “50-50 strategy” about whether the boy was under or above ground, Mr Hutchings said his assessment on the boy being in the pipe was nowhere near that ratio.
He said it was “5%, even if that” and the search of the pipe was to content himself that “he was not there”. He said the 5% figure did not influence the speed or urgency of the search of the culvert.
The jury heard it was the working hypothesis that Noah was missing voluntarily, although concerns about his worrying behaviour had been noted after reports that he was naked indicated the possible “disturbed state of mind” which “may point to the presence of some drug”.
Mr Hutchings said it was taken as a possible explanation for his behaviour.
Under questioning, he also said he was aware members of the public near Northwood Linear Park had heard possible signs of distress and screams through the night.
Asked to explain the 5% probability for the culvert in light of this information, Mr Hutchings said it was searched “as quickly as possible” while “other high priority areas” were searched.
He said they could have searched the whole pipe and found he was not in there.
Mr Hutchings said he “got the result” of finding Noah without anyone else being injured in the search.
Ms Campbell put it to him that his task was preferably to find the boy alive.
He said: “I would’ve done anything to find him alive – unfortunately he was dead.”
He said at “no point” was the search of the pipe a rescue mission.
Asked about the outlet of the culvert towards Belfast Harbour, he said: “I would have been wasting the limited resources I had at that time by sending them down to the Lough.”
He said he did not consider calling divers or other specialist personnel as the WICS (working in confined spaces) team was going through the culvert methodically.
Mr Hutchings later ordered a drone to be flown over the outlet on Thursday to “discount” that Noah may have crawled all the way through and “could be lying there”. Elsewhere on that day, he said he became aware the search of the pipe had slowed down due to difficult conditions.
Mr Hutchings was also asked about a note in his logs that the senior investigating officer was working under a scenario that Noah was missing voluntarily or under the influence of a third party.
He said the “main one” was voluntarily but they still had to consider he could be in somebody’s car or home.
The jury heard that between the Tuesday morning, when 180 metres had been searched, teams had advanced a further 320 metres within the 970-metre storm drain by Friday morning. The remainder of the pipe was said to be half-filled with water, at low tide.
He said he was then “grasping at straws” for anyone that could help.
A PSNI search-and-rescue team with caving experience put on drysuits and searched the pipe on Saturday and found Noah’s body.
Mr Hutchings said he has since learned that, under health and safety rules, they should not have been going in there without confined space training.
Ms Campbell suggested 10 possible failures in the search process, including an alleged failure to prioritise the culvert as an area the boy may be, an alleged delay in seeking maps or information of the hazards within, and an alleged failure to treat the operation as a rescue mission.
Mr Hutchings said he did not accept any of Ms Campbell’s points and said he stood by his assertion that nothing the team could have done differently could have found Noah any sooner.
Under further questioning by Donal Lunny KC, who represents the PSNI, Mr Hutchings said he had never written down “5%” during the search and said he gave the figure in the “spur of the moment” when asked by Ms Campbell.
However, he said he considered the underground system a “far lower probability” than other areas.
He said he had ongoing training since becoming a Polsa in 2007 – and had conducted more than 100 searches in the last year.
It also heard that 50% of missing persons in Noah’s age range are found within three kilometres of their home while males tend to hang around streets and are traced quicker by general police patrols.
Mr Hutchings explained the rationale for the search area through references to mobile phone pings, Noah’s recent search history and CCTV sightings. He said densely-populated urban areas can be much more difficult to search than open areas.
Asked about how a search from the other end of the culvert would have lined up with standard practice, he said: “You don’t do it. You stay at the place last seen and work systematically out.
“Me jumping away to the far side could have missed him completely.”
Mr Hutchings also said search teams never heard a response to any call-out or human sounds within the pipe that did not come from the team itself. He said if they had heard such sounds, they would have initiated a rescue operation.
Meanwhile, the coroner Mr Justice Rooney told the jury he would update them on the progress of the inquest, which he said was “moving, maybe, not as quickly as I would have hoped”.
For all the latest news, visit the Belfast Live homepage here and sign up to our daily newsletter here.
