NEED TO KNOW
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The 14-year-old boy was found naked and dead in a sewer in Northern Ireland in June 2020
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This week, an expert said at the inquest into his death that it was likely he had survived entering a storm drain
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“The quadrant will fill up with water relatively quickly,” Professor Carolyn Roberts said.
Nearly six years after a missing 14-year-old boy was found naked and dead in a storm drain in Northern Ireland, an expert says it’s possible he survived entering space.
This week, Professor Carolyn Roberts spoke at the inquest into the death of Noah Donohoe and revealed that the teenager may have entered the sewer by squeezing through “vertical metal bars” before being found dead in June 2020, the BBC and Britain’s The Independent reported.
“The slats of the grille were spaced widely enough for a large child or even a small man to deliberately climb over without undue effort,” Roberts said in the report commissioned by the Northern Ireland Coroner’s Service and presented at Belfast Coroner’s Court.
On 21 June 2020, Donohoe left his home in Belfast by bicycle at around 5:40 pm local time and was reported missing. According to Ireland’s national public service broadcaster, Raidió Teilifís Eireann (RTÉ), his body was discovered six days later.
An autopsy revealed his cause of death was drowning, the agency reported.
According to the BBC, the layout of the storm drain was “relatively complex and for a stranger moving in the dark, in my view, it could have been disorienting,” Roberts told the court.
After visiting the site himself, the professor determined that the sewer was most likely exposed to high tides on the June night, after the 14-year-old boy entered the drainage system, between 11:30 p.m. and midnight.
According to The Independent, she told the court: “This was about five or six hours after his last sighting, which would have allowed him enough time to walk along the drain for several hundred metres.”
“At this point, the water had likely risen almost completely, filling the drain around and directly above the spot where the boy’s body was discovered, creating conditions for drowning,” Roberts said.
“The quadrant would have filled with water relatively quickly,” the expert continued, “and in the dark with its complex network of pipes and cold conditions, the boy would have likely become confused, in my view.”
While it was possible that Donohoe could survive multiple tidal cycles, the temperature in the storm drain “would not in my opinion be conducive to doing this with a naked body,” she told the court, Independence report.
Roberts said it was likely the teen entered a storm drain late in the afternoon of June 21, 2020, and crawled or walked about 2,000 feet before drowning, news outlets reported.
According to reports, other experts also talked about whether to install the screen or not. Dr. Mark Cooper said during the hearing that “the decision not to have a security screen was crucial to this case,” the BBC reported.
Earlier this year, the child’s mother, Fiona Donohoe, described the time between reporting Noah missing and his body being found as a “living nightmare” in video played in court. Guardian.
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In the week before he went missing, she also became increasingly worried about his mental health.
According to RTÉ, she said in the video: “I remember every detail of Noah, my beautiful lover.”
Read the original article about Humans