{"id":483446,"date":"2026-05-14T00:26:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T00:26:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/483446\/"},"modified":"2026-05-14T00:26:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T00:26:12","slug":"not-reasonably-foreseeable-someone-would-access-culvert-where-noah-donohoes-body-found-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/483446\/","title":{"rendered":"Not \u2018reasonably foreseeable\u2019 someone would access culvert where Noah Donohoe\u2019s body found \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was not \u201creasonably foreseeable\u201d that someone would access the entrance to a culvert in which Noah Donohoe<\/a>\u2019s body was found, a senior Stormont<\/a> official has told an inquest.<\/p>\n

Jonathan McKee from the Department for Infrastructure (DfI) said he had never encountered another death which had occurred in the same circumstances as that of the Belfast<\/a> schoolboy.<\/p>\n

Noah, a pupil at St Malachy\u2019s College, was 14 when his naked body was found in an underground water 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.<\/p>\n

He was found more than 600m downstream from where he had last been seen, close to the culvert inlet behind houses at Northwood Road in north Belfast.<\/p>\n

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

The long-running inquest, which is in its 15th week, heard further evidence from DfI official McKee on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

He was questioned by Neasa Murnaghan, barrister for the DfI, about whether it would have been possible to erect a fence between four houses on Northwood Road and the area of land where the culvert is located.<\/p>\n

McKee said that would have been potentially \u201ccutting off access\u201d for those homeowners to an area of land which was not owned by the department.<\/p>\n

Murnaghan asked it if was \u201creasonably foreseeable a trespasser would have accessed\u201d the area.<\/p>\n

McKee said: \u201cI don\u2019t believe so. It is not a publicly accessible piece of land, it is bounded by security fencing and a locked gate across its boundaries.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are hedging and fencing at one of the other boundaries and then there are four residential properties on the other boundary.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have been on this piece of land quite a few times and it is certainly a vigilant community.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t feel you have the right to be there, you feel you are on someone\u2019s property.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said the only reason he was able to go was because of legal authority from his department. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt wouldn\u2019t have been, in my view, an area of land where it would have been foreseeable for someone to come on to the houses, enter into their gardens and then cross over that boundary fence or through a gate into this area of land.\u201d<\/p>\n

The barrister asked the witness about options the department could have taken to reduce risks of access to the culvert.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is not always possible to manage the risk associated with infrastructure down to zero,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cGuidance is the tool to balance the risks that exist. Fencing wasn\u2019t a practicable option.\u201d<\/p>\n

The witness said there were a number of deterrents, including the barred debris screen over the entrance to the culvert.<\/p>\n

\u201cI myself wondered could I get through the debris screen. I tried to do that and I couldn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

Murnaghan asked: \u201cIn all of your experience have you ever come across a death which has arisen in these circumstances.\u201d<\/p>\n

McKee responded: \u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n

The witness said there could be \u201csignificant waterflows\u201d within the culvert.<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cThe stream is idyllic many days of the year but there are times during storms when the water level would rise significantly and pose a real significant threat of entrapment.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust because flooding does not occur very often doesn\u2019t mean the risk is low.\u201d<\/p>\n

After lunch, Murnaghan said the jury had heard claims earlier in the inquest that when the culvert was refurbished in 2017, with new steps constructed, it had improved public access to the site.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt doesn\u2019t change the public accessibility in terms of the overall site and the location,\u201d McKee said. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt doesn\u2019t change the fencing and it doesn\u2019t change the gates and it doesn\u2019t change all of the other mitigation factors that are around the site that would prevent access, or deter access to the culvert.\u201d<\/p>\n

The witness was asked about the replacement of the debris screen at the culvert in 2017 by the department.<\/p>\n

He said it was a \u201clike-for-like replacement\u201d.<\/p>\n

The inquest will resume on Thursday. \u2013 PA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was not \u201creasonably foreseeable\u201d that someone would access the entrance to a culvert in which Noah Donohoe\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":276501,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[663,9,10,13,14,6,11,12,15,16,5,41020,954,51349,7,8,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-483446","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-latest-news","15":"tag-latestnews","16":"tag-main-news","17":"tag-mainnews","18":"tag-news","19":"tag-noah-donohoe","20":"tag-northern-ireland","21":"tag-stormont-assembly","22":"tag-top-stories","23":"tag-topstories","24":"tag-world","25":"tag-world-news","26":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116570094692168054","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483446","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=483446"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483446\/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=483446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=483446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=483446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}