{"id":298092,"date":"2026-01-22T18:31:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-22T18:31:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/298092\/"},"modified":"2026-01-22T18:31:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T18:31:10","slug":"his-moods-have-been-so-out-of-character-mother-told-police-on-phone-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/298092\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018His moods have been so out of character,\u2019 mother told police on phone \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Noah Donohoe\u2019s mother was \u201cvery concerned about his mental health<\/a>\u201d in the week before the Belfast teenager\u2019s disappearance, an inquest<\/a> into his death has heard.<\/p>\n

On the first day of evidence at Belfast<\/a> coroner\u2019s court, the phone call made by Fiona Donohoe to police to report him missing on June 21st, 2020, was played in full to jurors.<\/p>\n

Ms Donohoe sat at the back of the court listening to the 25-minute recording and sobbed with her head in her hands.<\/p>\n

She left the courtroom towards the end of the audio but later returned.<\/p>\n

Jurors heard her express concerns during the call about her 14-year-old son\u2019s mood after she had found him crying in his bedroom earlier that day.<\/p>\n

\"FamilyFamily handout photograph of Noah Donohoe issued by the PSNI <\/p>\n

The St Malachy\u2019s schoolboy had hugged her throughout the day and told her he loved her. He had planned to cycle from their home in south Belfast to meet friends at Cave Hill in the north of the city.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was very concerned about his mental health all week … My instinct told me it was not right,\u201d she told the call handler.<\/p>\n

She said his disappearance was \u201cso unlike him\u201d and that he had never gone missing before.<\/p>\n

\u201cOver the last week, he has not been himself at all. I am really concerned for his safety,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe has been so up and down, his moods have been so out of character.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026 All this day, he\u2019s been really huggy.\u201d<\/p>\n

She described her son as a \u201creal deep wee thinker\u201d who recently had become \u201creally philosophical and so deep in thought about his life\u201d.<\/p>\n

Such was her concern in the days before his disappearance that she contacted a schoolteacher providing pastoral support at St Malachy\u2019s. Counselling support was offered by the teacher.<\/p>\n

The jury heard the teenager told his mother he was \u201cnot ready yet\u201d for the counselling but did not reject the idea.<\/p>\n

Covid lockdown had led to him experiencing \u201cisolation\u201d, Ms Donohoe told the call handler.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think this week it\u2019s really come to a head,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Earlier, Peter Coll, counsel for the coroner, told the jury Noah had left his home on his bicycle at about 5.40pm on June 21st, 2020. He took a backpack containing his laptop and a book called 12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson<\/a>, which the teenager was \u201cquite taken with at the time\u201d.<\/p>\n

Noah\u2019s mother told the caller handler that he had been \u201cobsessed\u201d with reading it.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe hasn\u2019t taken it out of his hand,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Mr Coll said CCTV picked Noah up as he left his home and as he cycled through the city centre. At one point he was seen to have been without his backpack and to have discarded his clothing.<\/p>\n

He was last seen cycling at Northwood Road and was, \u201cdisturbingly\u201d, not wearing any clothes, Mr Coll told the jury. He got off his bike and went down the side of a house that led to a linear park where a stream ran into an underground storm drain, which Mr Coll described as a culvert.<\/p>\n

Jurors heard he was found dead hundreds of metres into the culvert six days later.<\/p>\n

A postmortem examination found that the cause of death was drowning.<\/p>\n

Before the formal opening of the inquest on Thursday, presiding coroner Mr Justice Rooney told the jury of nine men and two women it was \u201cabsolutely imperative\u201d that \u201ceach of you remain impartial and independent\u201d. The judge said it would be a \u201cdistressing day\u201d for Ms Donohoe.<\/p>\n

He told jurors they must \u201cset aside any sympathy you have\u201d and not have a \u201cpredetermined view\u201d of the outcome of the inquest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Noah Donohoe\u2019s mother was \u201cvery concerned about his mental health\u201d in the week before the Belfast teenager\u2019s disappearance,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":298093,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[663,9,10,13,14,6,147670,11,12,15,16,5,7,8,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-298092","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-belfast","9":"tag-breaking-news","10":"tag-breakingnews","11":"tag-featured-news","12":"tag-featurednews","13":"tag-headlines","14":"tag-jordan-peterson","15":"tag-latest-news","16":"tag-latestnews","17":"tag-main-news","18":"tag-mainnews","19":"tag-news","20":"tag-top-stories","21":"tag-topstories","22":"tag-world","23":"tag-world-news","24":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115940182174855810","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298092"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298092\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/298093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}