A senior PSNI officer has conceded the mother of Noah Donohoe is “in a position of not having answers” about the death of her son because of “mistakes made” by police.
The lead investigator into the death and disappearance of the schoolboy said Fiona Donohoe was left “wondering” and he was “truly sorry” that their relationship deteriorated.
Noah, a pupil at St Malachy’s College, was 14 when his naked body was found in a storm drain tunnel in north Belfast on June 27th, 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.
Over the course of 20 weeks, 76 witnesses have given evidence to the jury at inquest at Belfast Coroners Court, a number of whom have remarked on the highly unorthodox nature of the case.
PSNI Detective Chief Inspector Phillips became the senior investigating officer (SIO) in relation to Noah’s case on Wednesday, June 24th, 2020, when it was transferred to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID).
At that point, he had been missing for three days.
Counsel for the Coroner, Peter Coll, put it to Phillips: “The situation as we’re in this court room now, six months on, the outcome of the police investigation is that police are not able to provide the answer as to why Noah did what we know he did, why he behaved as he did and why he died as he did.”
He replied: “Yes, unfortunately so.”
Coll then asked if, with the benefit of hindsight, there is “anything that you feel has been missed by police at the time as you went along that has negatively impacted on your ability to understand and present an explanation to the jury as to what happened?”
Phillips said: “There are broadly things that we have missed and mistakes made which has left Fiona in a position of not having answers.
“In terms of what that would have told us in terms of what happened to Noah – I don’t think so.”
Referring to a CCTV camera which police failed to procure footage from, Phillips said: “I’m sorry, that should have been found.
“Fiona shouldn’t be sat here six years on wondering was there a camera there and what did it show,” he said.
He added: “With the benefit of hindsight we did everything we could to find him and I’m content that the PSNI did everything we could to find him as quickly as we could.”
The officer went on: “Certainly as time has gone on I regularly think if there was something I could have done to manage my relationship with Fiona in a different way because it deteriorated so quickly.
“I am truly sorry for any part that I played in that.
“Noah’s case is unusual enough as it is, nobody should be in this position.
“I think six years on, I don’t know what else we could have done to help us understand what happened to him and why.”
Phillips also said “one of the biggest mistakes made” was that he “didn’t challenge mum’s account enough” meaning police “didn’t look at (Noah’s) actions in the days and weeks prior to his disappearance”.
“I’m not for one moment saying Fiona did anything wrong, I should have been more inquisitive into his home life,” he said.
Coll raised a police log showing discussion of whether the case should have been classed as “critical”, with Phillips saying: “Critical does not mean we think we’ve done something wrong but critical means we have to put the structure in place for public reassurance.”
“We are trying to identify where Noah is while also trying to manage an unparalleled amount of public interest,” he said.
“The amount of rumours and conspiracy that was flooding the public that Noah had been kidnapped by various parties, that he had been murdered.”
He said there were rumours of “retribution attack” and police did not know where these were coming from.
“The critique was coming in from the public that we were in the wrong area, that we weren’t doing enough, why hadn’t we found him,” he said.
Brenda Campbell, representing Donohoe, asked if Phillips agreed “there is an answer” to what happened to Noah.
When the officer asked for clarity, Campbell said “Mr Coll just summarised to you that police are unable to provide an answer but there must be an answer”, to which Phillips agreed.
“Yes, whether or not we could have found it but we didn’t find the answer, no,” he said.
Campbell went on to ask Phillips a series of short questions – does he know where Noah went when he was captured on CCTV leaving his home in the early hours of June 21st, did anyone see him, did he go into a property, where did he leave his flipflops, how did he get them back, why was his belt hanging loose on his return and to what extent what was that trip linked to his disappearance later that same day.
Phillips answered “I don’t know” and to the final question said “no, we should have found those answers”.
Later, Campbell put it to the the officer that already by that stage in her questioning he had “answered on more than 30 occasions ‘I don’t know’”.
“There are many unanswered questions in Noah’s investigation”, she said to which Phillips agreed.
He also agreed when she highlighted it was his “job to find and gather evidence”.
