Missing 14-Year-Old Boy Drowned in Storm Drain After He Squeezed Through Entrance, Expert Says at Hearing

YOU NEED TO KNOW

• In June 2020, a 14-year-old boy was found naked and dead in a culvert in Northern Ireland.

• This week an expert told an inquest into his death that he may have entered the storm drain alive.

• “The quadrant will fill with water relatively quickly,” Professor Carolyn Roberts said.

About six years later Missing 14-year-old teenager found naked and dead An expert at a storm drain in Northern Ireland said there was a good chance it entered space alive.

This week, Professor Carolyn Roberts spoke at an inquest into the death of Noah Donohoe, revealing the teenager likely squeezed “vertical metal rods” into the culvert before he was found dead in June 2020. BBC And Independent reported.

“The bars of the grate are sufficiently widely spaced that a large child or even a small man could deliberately pass through without undue effort,” Roberts said in his report, commissioned by the Northern Ireland Coroner’s Office and presented at Belfast Coroner’s Court, according to The Independent.

Donohoe left his home in Belfast on his bike at around 17:40 local time on 21 June 2020 and was reported missing. His body was found six days later, according to Ireland’s national public service broadcaster. Raidió Teilifís Eireann (RTE).

The autopsy revealed that the cause of death was asphyxiation, the news outlet reported.

According to the BBC, Roberts told the court that the layout of the storm drain was “relatively complex and I think it would be possible for an unfamiliar person moving in semi-darkness to become disoriented”.

After personally visiting the site, the professor determined that the culvert would likely experience high tide between 11:30pm and midnight on the June night when the 14-year-old boy entered the drainage system.

“This is approximately five or six hours after he was last seen, which would have given him sufficient time to progress a few hundred meters along the culvert,” he told the court, according to The Independent.

“It is possible that at this point the water has risen almost completely, filling the culvert just above where the child’s body was found and creating drowning conditions,” Roberts said.

“The quarter will fill with water relatively quickly, and in my opinion, the child may become confused in the dark due to a complex network of pipes and cold conditions,” the expert continued, according to the outlet.

While it’s possible Donohoe could have survived multiple tidal cycles, the temperature in the storm drain “I don’t think would have allowed that with a naked body,” he told the court. Independent reported.

Roberts said the teen entered the storm drain late in the afternoon of June 21, 2020, and crawled or walked about 600 meters before drowning.

According to reports, other experts also talked about whether a screen should be installed. According to the BBC, Dr. Mark Cooper told the hearing that “the decision to not have a security screen was very important to this case.”

Earlier this year, the child’s mother, Fiona Donohoe, Reports that Noah went missing and his body was found as a “living nightmare” in video footage played in court. Guard.

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In the week before her disappearance, she also became increasingly concerned about his mental health.

“I miss every detail of my beautiful darling Noah,” he said in the video. RTÉ.

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