{"id":305641,"date":"2026-01-27T05:45:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-27T05:45:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/305641\/"},"modified":"2026-01-27T05:45:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T05:45:08","slug":"noah-donohoe-excited-for-future-in-days-prior-to-disappearance-friend-tells-court-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/305641\/","title":{"rendered":"Noah Donohoe \u2018excited\u2019 for future in days prior to disappearance, friend tells court \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Messages sent by Noah Donohoe<\/a> detailed how his moods were \u201cup and down\u201d in the week before his disappearance, an inquest into the Belfast<\/a> teenager\u2019s death has heard.<\/p>\n

Online exchanges between the 14-year-old and his friend, Jay Tierney, were read at Belfast Coroner\u2019s court on Monday following the opening of the long-awaited hearing last week.<\/p>\n

Giving evidence for over two hours, Mr Tierney said he considered Noah to be his best friend and described him as a \u201cstraight A student\u201d who was \u201calways very caring\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was eccentric but not in a bad way\u2026his mind was always 14 steps ahead. He was one in a million,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Noah had \u201crough patches\u201d but was \u201con the up and up\u201d and \u201cvery excited about the future\u201d, Mr Tierney told jurors.<\/p>\n

The 14-year-old St Malachy\u2019s College student went missing on June 21st, 2020, sparking a major search operation.<\/p>\n

His body was found in a storm drain six days later. A postmortem examination found that the cause of death was drowning.<\/p>\n

Mr Tierney was in Noah\u2019s form class at St Malachy\u2019s and the pair communicated online during the first Covid lockdown, sometimes spending up to eight hours a day on Skype calls.<\/p>\n

They had planned to meet at Cave Hill in the north of the city on the day of his disappearance.<\/p>\n

The trip was cancelled by Mr Tierney due to poor weather and he sent Noah two messages which were \u201cnever read\u201d, the court heard.<\/p>\n

In a separate message sent by Noah on June 19th, he spoke about his feelings to Mr Tierney and another friend.<\/p>\n

\u201cDude I\u2019ve been really up and down the past few days, just thinking about life in general,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

\u201cI realise that has taken a toll on me. But I\u2019m fine now and I\u2019m sorry if I\u2019ve been really cold with you.\u201d<\/p>\n

In another message read to the court, Noah said he \u201crealised there\u2019s stuff I\u2019ve been in denial about\u201d.<\/p>\n

He did not want to lie to his friends about how he \u201cfelt in the past\u201d.<\/p>\n

Donal Lunney, counsel for the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) asked Mr Tierney if he knew what had caused his friend\u2019s \u201cdenial\u201d.<\/p>\n

He said he could not speculate on this but did not believe it was linked to Noah\u2019s sexuality.<\/p>\n

\u201cNoah was definitely straight. There\u2019s no notion of Noah struggling with his sexuality,\u201d Mr Tierney said.<\/p>\n

The court heard that on the day before his disappearance, the two friends met for the first time since lockdown and had a three-hour walk across the city.<\/p>\n

The main focus of their conversation was a book Noah was reading called 12 Rules for Life by Joran Peterson.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt seemed to be very important to him…It was like the book was the catalyst to what he was thinking,\u201d Mr Tierney told the court.<\/p>\n

Jurors were also shown a social media message from Noah to his mother, Fiona Donohoe, a week before his disappearance, in which he said, \u201crisks must be taken because the greatest risk in life is doing nothing\u201d.<\/p>\n

Mr Tierney said they discussed the quote on their walk and he interpreted the \u201crisk\u201d as Noah moving to London.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was nothing untoward or bad,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

The principal of St Malachy\u2019s, Deirdre McCusker, told the inquest that Noah was one of the top academic achievers in his year group.<\/p>\n

He was a \u201creally lovely child\u201d who \u201cepitomised the ethos\u201d of the school, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cNoah was humble though he was exceptionally bright,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Ms McCusker was contacted by Noah\u2019s mother a week before his disappearance due to concerns about his mood and motivation for school work.<\/p>\n

Counselling and supervised study was offered by the school.<\/p>\n

Issues raised by Ms Donohoe were \u201cnot unusual\u201d given Noah\u2019s age group and during the period of the Covid restrictions, Ms McCusker told the court.<\/p>\n

The school\u2019s cello teacher, Andrew Nesbitt, said he had never taught a student who \u201cprogressed as well as Noah did\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was an exceptional student,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The inquest continues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Messages sent by Noah Donohoe detailed how his moods were \u201cup and down\u201d in the week before his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":276501,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[663,9,10,64,13,14,6,11,12,15,16,5,41020,954,952,7,8,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-305641","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-covid-19","12":"tag-featured-news","13":"tag-featurednews","14":"tag-headlines","15":"tag-latest-news","16":"tag-latestnews","17":"tag-main-news","18":"tag-mainnews","19":"tag-news","20":"tag-noah-donohoe","21":"tag-northern-ireland","22":"tag-police-service-of-northern-ireland-psni","23":"tag-top-stories","24":"tag-topstories","25":"tag-world","26":"tag-world-news","27":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115965481671578153","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305641","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=305641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305641\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}