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On Sunday, June 21, 2020, not only was it Father’s Day, but it was also three months into the COVID lockdown when Fiona Donohoe contacted police at 9:44 pm after her son failed to return home as expected. 14-year-old Noah Donohoe left their flat about four hours earlier that day when he told her that he was going to Cavehill with two of his friends, a location five miles (8 km) north of where they lived in Belfast, the capital of Northern Ireland.
Noah had just begun venturing out to see friends after three months of lockdown inside the apartment he shared with his mother. On Saturday, one day earlier, Noah met up with a friend he hadn’t seen & they had such a great day that they planned to meet up again on Sunday with their other friends at Cavehill. Cavehill is a gorgeous, 1,200 foot high rocky hill that overlooks Belfast.
Fiona tearfully recalls the last time she saw her son when Noah came & told her at 5:30 pm that he was heading out with friends to ride over to Cavehill. Fiona felt reluctant to let him go since they hadn’t yet had their dinner, but she realized how much it meant for him to spend time with his friends after being isolated for so many months. As he left at 5:41 pm, she specifically told him to call & check in with her at 6:30 pm & to be sure to be home by 8 pm. Since he was also so incredibly responsible & reliable, Fiona didn’t worry as he headed out.
She tearfully recalls this final interaction with her son with many regrets, wishing she had never allowed him to go, something that haunts her each & every day that has since gone by. She also thinks of the simple things that she overlooked that day, the fact that she didn’t have the contact information for Noah’s friends. Noah had recently gotten a new phone & Fiona knew he charged it before he left, but he failed to answer her calls & texts after he failed to check in at 6:30 pm, something that was absolutely out of character for him. She was immediately concerned, but at the same time, Fiona didn’t want to overreact so she tried to stay calm & believe that he would just come home safely at their agreed upon time of 8 pm.
Noah’s case went on to be not only exceptionally tragic, but also puzzling which has led to many theories that have fueled public speculation. Fiona continues to hold on to one simple hope; getting justice for her beloved son.
Noah Peter Donohoe was born on November 25, 2005 to his single, yet loving & devoted mother, Fiona, who worked as a healthcare assistant. Their Belfast home was filled with love as Noah was Fiona’s entire world & they shared an incredible bond. She described her son as a beautiful soul with a beautiful mind. She went on to say, I have been so blessed. He poured a whole lifetime of love into my life in just 14 short years.
Fiona met Noah’s father, Emmanuel Djakpa, who originated from Senegal, while they were living in Boston. At the time, she was in America working as a nanny & a caregiver for the elderly. Their relationship was very brief & Noah never met his father in person, but they did communicate through Skype & phone calls throughout the years.
Two years before Noah vanished, Emmanuel nearly lost his own life when he was the victim of a brutal shooting in downtown Boston. Though they never met, he would later say that he was still incredibly proud of his son.
Being a single mother, Fiona made it her mission to provide for her son & to be the best role model she could possibly be. She indicated that her son was the type of child that any parent would be proud to have & she realized how lucky she was to have him. He was a model child who never gave her any difficulty & she described him as her soulmate.
Noah was a very diverse, dimensional boy & maybe not your typical 14-year-old; he had a deep interest in learning & loved philosophy & was also trying to teach himself Japanese. He played rugby & basketball for the Belfast Phoenix team. During the three years he spent at St. Malachy’s College, Noah was a standout student, earning many awards that included perfect attendance & the prestigious Spirit of College Award.
Noah also had a love for music & was part of his school’s music department as a talented cellist. Despite the fact that Fiona admitted that her son may not have been the most fantastic singer, it didn’t stop him from joining the school choir.
Those that knew Noah the best described him as the perfect gentleman; not only was he incredibly kind, but he was also fiercely competitive & wise beyond his years. He was bright, driven & his life was full of promise. He was a straight-A student who dreamed of one day becoming a doctor & hoped to attend the prestigious Trinity College in Dublin.
Though Noah was typically very upbeat in nature, reports indicate that in the days leading up to his disappearance, his spirits seemed lower. He cancelled plans for a day out, telling his mom that he just wanted time alone to think. When Fiona was with the school’s pastoral team on June 16, five days before her son vanished, she voiced concern over the obvious shift in Noah’s mood & worried that something was wrong, but at the same time, she also realized that he was a hormonal teenager going through so many changes.
Two days later, on June 18, Noah sent a friend a cryptic text message, Ask yourself, are you truly happy with things in your life?
However, by Saturday, June 20, Noah’s friend indicated that he seemed calmer & while they were together, he focused a lot of his conversation on a book he’d been reading by Jordan Peterson while he discussed risks that must be taken in life.
When Fiona contacted police on Sunday night, she explained that he hadn’t checked in nor come home at their agreed upon time & she also voiced her concern over his recent shift in mood while she worried about his present state of mind.
Police began searching for Noah that night, but to Fiona’s horror, they called off the search due to rain as they were afraid for the health & safety of their officers. This is despite the fact that it was an urban area with flatland within a crucial timeframe of the investigation.
CCTV from a number of sources depicted Noah leaving his home on Fitzroy Avenue at 5:41 pm; he was riding his black Apollo bike, wearing a helmet, a jacket, shorts, a hoody, trainers & carrying a backpack. He rode his bike through Belfast City Centre & at various points throughout his journey, he appeared to discard some of his possessions including his backpack & cell phone.
According to Fiona, despite the extensive amount of CCTV along Noah’s route, she was told by investigators that only a fraction of them depicted Noah. During an interview with YouTuber James English, Fiona indicated that of the maybe 180 cameras, only 22 have Noah on footage which has been a point of contention & confusion in her son’s investigation.
At approximately 5:59 pm, Noah was seen by both eyewitnesses as well as CCTV falling off of his bike. When a driver saw this, he offered Noah help, but he quickly got back on his bike & traveled along York Road before turning left onto Skegoniell Avenue & then onto Northwood Crescent & finally Northwood Road. His helmet was later recovered from a place on Northwood Road while it’s possible that some of his other clothing was left at various addresses along this same street. His bike was left outside of 89 Northwood Road in an area that was miles away from where he told his mom he was going as well as a location that he wasn’t familiar with.
Surveillance from a home on Northwood Road showed Noah riding his bike naked before he discarded his bike & made his way down the side of the home at 89 Northwood Road. A small stream runs at the rear of the home that leads to a culvert inlet. Access to the land around the stream & culvert is the property of designated forest land & in June 2020, was controlled by a locked gate.
Northwood Road is a densely populated street with rows of terraced homes that are situated along a cul-de-sac. Despite the fact that it was 6:11 pm on Father’s Day during COVID lockdown, a time when most of the home’s occupants were likely there, no one came forward to report seeing Noah walking around naked. When investigators later spoke with two different residents along this street, they both saw this naked boy, but at the time, each believed it was part of a Father’s Day prank.
It wasn’t until the following day, on Monday evening, when police became aware that Noah was in this area. A resident of the home at 89 Northwood Road contacted police regarding the fact that she found the bike that matched the description that was shared in an appeal by police as well as on social media.
The culvert behind the home was secured by a metal cover & grill, but was not secured with a padlock. Since only residents of certain properties had access to the land around the storm drain, it was not a public park.
Investigators later learned that Noah had snuck out of his house fourteen hours earlier on the day that he vanished. While it was pouring rain, he left his house at 3:30 am & returned 35 minutes later at 4:05 am. Based on CCTV, he was wearing a t-shirt, shorts & flip flops & carrying headphones, but when he came back just as dawn was breaking, he was soaking wet & without the headphones or the flip flops.
When Fiona reported her son missing, she had no idea this occurred & when she was asked if he could have snuck out from the apartment at any time without her knowledge, she told investigators that there was only one key & all the doors are very squeaky so she doubted he would be able to leave without her knowledge. Presented with this footage, she realized she was wrong.
Fiona cannot imagine why her son snuck out or where he’d gone & this revelation only seemed to deepen the mystery of what he was doing when he left later that day when he told his mom that he was going out with friends. It’s unclear why Noah was discarding his belongings & clothing, why he was naked, why he left his bike & walked behind a house in an area that he was completely unfamiliar with.
Fiona waited six agonizing days, not knowing where her son was & when Noah’s whereabouts were discovered, the news was tragic. On Saturday, June 27, 2020, Noah’s body was found within the drain system 1 km downstream of the inlet culvert behind the cul-de-sac of rowhouses along Northwood Road.
Evidence suggests that Noah must have made his own way along this distance underground before he reached a section of pipe network near the M2 motorway.
Noah’s autopsy proved that his cause of death was drowning. The forensic pathologist was unable to provide an exact time of death, but it’s assumed he died hours after his last known sighting which was at about 7 pm on Sunday, June 21, 2020, the day he left his house. According to Fiona, a water sample was never taken from the drain culvert where Noah was said to have died in order to match it with the contents of his lungs to definitively confirm that it was a match to that specific location.
According to the Donohoe family, the tunnels where Noah’s body was found experienced tidal changes twice a day which would have resulted in his body being submerged in water yet his body displayed water damage to only his hands & feet. The presence of bacteria within the tunnels would have also likely caused significant damage to his remains, but this was not the case. There were also no signs of rodent or insect damage to Noah’s body.
Police theorized that since onlookers as well as CCTV proved that Noah fell off his bike before he vanished, he may have suffered a head injury which caused him to become disoriented, remove his clothing & crawl into the drain system. However, based on CCTV footage that Fiona has seen, she does not believe this to be the case as when he did fall, the footage depicted that he didn’t strike his head & he got back up extremely quickly; he was also wearing a helmet at the time.
According to investigators, there was no sign of a struggle or foul play & his toxicology test proved there were no drugs or alcohol involved. However, when Fiona later saw her son’s remains, she noticed a large marking on his forehead as well as the side of his head that she fully believes was not consistent with a fall off his bike.
On top of her immense grief, Fiona was horrified by the thought that her son’s remains were recovered in the pitch black of an underground storm drain where Noah wouldn’t have been able to see a thing in his final moments as he had a lifelong terror of the dark.
Because of his tremendous fear of the dark, Fiona chose to have Noah cremated since she was so distraught at the thought of her 14-year-old son’s body being locked in a pitch-black casket. This decision means that should new theories or revelations arise, his body won’t be able to be exhumed & reexamined.
Neighbors within the cul-de-sac where Noah was last seen were baffled at the location where his remains were recovered as some of the home’s residents had lived there for twenty years & were completely unaware of the presence of the storm drain. They cannot understand how Noah could have known it was there, especially since Fiona was adamant that this was a street that her son had never visited.
Fiona questions if a hostel that was set up very close to their apartment for COVID purposes had anything to do with her son’s death. She’d made previous complaints to the hostel regarding some of the unsavory individuals that she noticed gathering so close to their home.
A woman staying in the hostel came forward & submitted a five page statement to Fiona’s solicitor that she was with four men that evening who were drug addicts who may have attacked Noah in an area where there was a 180 meter blind spot with no CCTV coverage. However, Fiona questions the true nature of this blind spot. This woman was found to have Noah’s laptop in her room at the hostel along with another man.
On the Friday after Noah went missing, investigators found his khaki backpack that contained a laptop & a copy of the book 12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson. His laptop was in the possession of a well known local criminal, Daryl Paul, who had a history of theft & armed robbery convictions. The man maintained that he found the backpack near Royal Avenue & three days after Noah vanished, he & this woman went to the Cash Converters store to try to sell the laptop, but staff refused to buy it & alerted police.
Paul later pleaded guilty to stealing the backpack & was jailed for three months. According to his lawyer, his client had no personal contact with Noah at any stage & said that the theft was simply opportunistic. When he found the backpack, he had no idea it belonged to the missing boy.
According to Fiona, a man who was recently released from prison came forward to her team of supporters & indicated that while he was behind bars, another inmate confessed to taking part in Noah’s murder & specified that he was drowned in a bathtub. She indicated that when they gave this information to the police, it was never taken seriously & the inmate was never questioned.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) ultimately ruled out foul play in the death of Noah Donohoe while Fiona has campaigned for answers since her son’s death & is hoping that answers will emerge during an inquest that is expected to begin in November 2025.
Because Noah’s case is so perplexing, it has been the subject of much public concern & speculation that has led to criticism as to how the police have handled the case.
The inquest was originally scheduled to take place in 2023 & run for six weeks, but there have been numerous delays; in 2024, the senior coroner, Joe McCrisken, who had been in charge of the pre-inquest proceedings over the past number of years, recused himself from proceedings without explanation.
Fiona has disputed a report by an unnamed psychiatrist which indicates that Noah might have died by suicide as he couldn’t cope with being gay with his perception of Jordan Peterson’s views of the future. Of course, this psychiatrist never previously met Noah & based their assessment on witness statements, testimony from friends & family & forensic reports along with CCTV, medical records & maps. Noah did not have a history of mental illness, self-harm & had previously been described as very happy & well-rounded.
In the report, the psychiatrist outlines a scenario where Noah is described as experiencing an acute episode of low & unstable mood at the time of his death. The suggestion of his struggle with his sexuality stems from communication with his friends in the weeks before his death when he described being in denial & coming out although the report admits that the messages are not clear.
According to Fiona, her son was not at all confused by his sexuality as she raised him in an open-minded household & around people of same-sex relationships. He was raised to be proud of who he was & to embrace everyone’s individuality regardless of color, religion or sexual preferences as long as they weren’t hurting another by doing so.
There are questions of the act of Noah riding naked along the way to the storm drain area reflecting a deeper sort of religious symbolism that will need further clarification. Hours before his death, Noah looked up ancient religious places including Sodom & Gomorrah in reference to Jordan Peterson’s Biblical Series released on the same day that Noah vanished that in his series of podcasts he features lectures from the ancient books of Genesis applied to modern life. The psychiatric report indicates that Noah also searched for advice on how to repel Satan. In statements collected by the PSNI, friends & others indicated that in the days before he vanished, Noah continuously carried Peterson’s book with him.
On the day of Noah’s disappearance, Peterson’s podcast episode was titled Sodom & Gomorrah & focused on transformation in human beings being like baptism & a return to water, the source of life.
Investigative journalist Donal Macintyre claimed that the last message Noah sent was to Peterson’s Instagram account. Although the message was answered, the PSNI have been unable to access the communication. It was Macintyre’s team of independent investigators that dug deeper into Noah’s case & were the ones to discover that Noah snuck out in the early morning hours before he vanished. This was something that had never been released by the police or even to his mother.
Macintyre believes there are no factors identified that suggest Noah was in any way suicidal. He had a fascination with Peterson & may have been suffering a mental health episode. He agrees with Fiona that nothing within Noah’s personal search history seemed to indicate that he was struggling with his sexuality.
Noah’s family believe that because he had such a thirst for life & people, there was no way he took his own life. While they wait for the inquest to begin, they feel they’re living a nightmare each day & can only hope that answers will come which might ease some of their pain.
An expert also uncovered a chilling photo that was found on Noah’s phone that was taken at 6:50 pm on the evening of his disappearance, about forty minutes after his last confirmed sighting at 6:11pm. The image was described as a palm or a portion of a hand. It was the type of photo that may have been accidentally taken when someone picked up the phone or held it in their hand. Noah’s family insist that the photo was not Noah’s own hand & was taken at a time when Fiona was incessantly calling her son, beginning to worry that he hadn’t called to check in at 6:30 pm as he promised.
As it stands, the list of unanswered questions continues to run through the minds of the Donohoe family: Why did Noah sneak out in the early morning hours of Sunday & where did he go between 3:30-4:05 am? Why did he go to an area of Belfast he never typically visited later in the day rather than Cavehill which was 2.3 miles (3.7 km) away? How did his body travel nearly 1,000 meters (0.6 miles) through a narrow storm drain system before being discovered with little sign of water damage after being in that location for six days? Not only that, but the drain itself had many obstructions, according to Noah’s aunt, which would have made it difficult to make his way through.
Fiona believes in her heart that someone harmed her baby & struggles to wrap her head around his last moments & the fact that she wasn’t there to protect him. She hopes & prays that someone will do the right thing & come forward with information that will shed light on the circumstances that led to his tragic death.
They realize that the inquest won’t ever bring their precious Noah back, but they hope they can find the truth so they can bring him justice. A Public Interest Immunity (PII) certificate is in use related to material in three police folders that will be used during the inquest, something Fiona is against as she believes is an attempt to cover up the circumstances of her son’s death or to protect informants. However, police lawyers say it’s common for forces to apply for the certificates to protect police investigations although they are more associated with terrorism cases.
An online petition in support of all material being disclosed at the inquest has gotten more than 300,000 signatures.
Fiona has previously raised concerns that Noah may have been coerced into some sort of illicit activity; was there an element of coercion or grooming? However, thus far, authorities have indicated that Noah acted alone & there was no evidence of third-party involvement.
Fiona’s hope lies in the long-delayed inquest that it might present a clearer picture as to what happened to her beloved son, the boy that she describes as her soulmate. In the meantime, she knows that her grief will last a lifetime
References:
- An inquest touching upon the death of Noah Donohoe
- BBC: Noah Donohoe: Body found in search for missing teenager
- The Irish News: Senior coroner steps aside from Noah Donohoe inquest
- BBC: Coroner recuses himself from Noah Donohoe inquest
- Buzz: Tragic teen’s mum slams psychiatric report & says ‘My Noah didn’t kill himself’
- BBC: Noah Donohoe: Solicitors have ‘grave concerns’ over withheld files
- The Guardian: Noah Donohoe death: court upholds police application over information
- Sunday World: CCTV captured Noah Donohoe sneaking out of house at 3:30 am on day of disappearance
- Sunday World: Noah Donohoe’s aunt says teen was cremated because he had lifelong fear of the dark
- Sunday World: Noah Donohoe’s mum rejects ‘suicide report’ which states son struggled with sexuality
- BBC: Court told about hand photo on Noah Donohoe phone
- Criminal: The eerie tale of Noah Donohoe, the Belfast teenager discovered deceased in a drainage system
- Medium: A Quest for the truth: The tragic story of Noah Donohoe
- YouTube: Anything Goes With James English: I want answers for my son – The Noah Donohoe story
- BBC: Noah Donohoe: Daryl Paul jailed for stealing schoolboy’s laptop
