[Music] thank you [Music] on Sunday June 21st 2020 Noah Donahoe was 14 years old and like most of the world was doing at the time he was trying to enjoy his life as best he could in the middle of covet lockdowns he hopped on his bike and headed towards Belfast City Center in Northern Ireland but he couldn't have known that this day would forever change his life and the lives of his friends and family his father was out of the picture but it wasn't because of some nasty breakup or a lengthy divorce Noah's mother Fiona
Donahoe had met him whilst on a trip in America and when she returned home and realized that she was pregnant she decided to raise her son by herself his father still checked in and made frequent calls and video calls to talk to Noah but he ultimately couldn't relocate to be with his child and Noah made do with these calls but teachers at his school described him as a quote measured and moderate student and said that he was doing well academically he played the cello and was a member of both the rugby and basketball teams and
that was where Noah truly came into his own his coaches would later describe him as someone who always knew how to have fun on the pitch and was a great Sportsman and a team player he even at one point earned the spirit of the college award from his school showing just how bright and warm of a student and a teammate he really was and when Noah went out that Day on June 21st it was actually to keep building on both of those parts of his personality he was meeting his friends in Cave Hill Park so
they could finish up some of the requirements to complete their Duke of Edinburgh awards for those of you unfamiliar the Duke of Edinburgh award is something that's 14 to 24 year olds can do and it's a tiered achievement program that involves going out into the wilderness camping and learning survival skills but the focus of the award is to help build up the person taking part it's supposed to instill confidence and help team building skills as well as resilience and it's something that people who take part in are really proud of some even go to put
it on their CVS because it does require a lot of effort and determination to make it through and each tier requires more team effort and more commitment to complete this is what Noah and his friends were meeting up in the park that day to do they were at a part of the program where they had to come up with a team strategy and plan to handle the next part of the requirements and that's what Noah and his teammates were planning on doing when they headed to the park a little after 5 40 pm we're able
to track a lot of Noah's movements that afternoon particularly because the ride to the park took him through the city center in fact there are about 22 confirmed recordings of Noah but there are chunks of his time that are missing and they only make his story more puzzling Noah left his home around the same time as everyone else and hopped on his bike at around 5 40 with his backpack that had his supplies in it and wearing a black jacket about seven minutes go by before he's caught on camera again and another only a minute
goes by after that one but both times he seems perfectly fine and doesn't seem to be in any sort of distress but just three minutes after that last recording at 5 53 Noah is next recorded riding his bike down the street but without his backpack this is particularly interesting as his backpack had his laptop in it which would be reason enough not to just leave it somewhere but he also needed his laptop for when he met up with his friends and there's no explanation as to why he would have left it behind at 6 PM
a witness saw Noah fall off his bike it wasn't a big fall and the witness said that Noah just picked himself up got back on his bike and he seemed fine so she didn't go over to check on him but just two minutes later Noah rode through a gated community without his jacket what he did next would only be more confusing when at six or eight he roared through the community and was spotted by Witnesses on his bike completely naked the witnesses said that aside from being completely undressed he seemed perfectly fine and wasn't acting
unusually but it's after this last eyewitness that we lose track of Noah altogether at around eight that evening a woman in that same neighborhood spotted a bike lying on her front garden and assumed that it belonged to one of her neighbor's Sons so she left it there but the next evening after she'd heard news about a missing 14 year old boy and that he was last seen riding his bicycle she called it into the police it didn't take them long to figure out that the bike did belong to Noah Donahoe but he was nowhere to
be seen three days after Noah went missing a career criminal Daryl pole tried to sail Noah's backpack with his books and his laptops still inside to a pawn shop but the owners had heard the news about Noah and refused to make a deal with Daryl and instead called the police Daryl told the police that he didn't know anything about Noah or why he was missing and that he'd found the backpack leaning up against one of the buildings at Ulster University campus investigators weren't that convinced by his statement especially because Daryl Paul had already been arrested
194 times before this but they were able to confirm his story through more CCTV footage a nose Trail went cold again Daryl was later arrested and charged with theft and for attempting to sell stolen goods but that's where his movement in all of this comes to an end and unfortunately this new CCTV footage didn't do anything to bring investigators closer to finding Noah all it did was confirm that something had happened to the Saint Malachi college student and by then they didn't believe that it was anything good only days after this arrest hundreds of mourners
gathered to hold a vigil for Noah even though nobody had been found and there was no hard evidence to prove that he wasn't coming home but that all changed on the sixth night that he was missing when Noah's body was found still undressed in a storm drain finding Noah answered some questions but in so many ways it only raised more his family then knew for certain that he was dead but they still didn't know what had killed him or how he had ended up in the storm drain an autopsy would reveal that Noah had no
drugs or alcohol in his system and that he'd died of droning meaning that he'd been alive when he went into the drain and then the investigators found out that the hatch to the dream had been left unlocked that particular hatch had actually been inspected only three days before Noah went missing but for whatever reason it was open that night and Noah went in investigators believed that Noah may have suffered a head injury whilst riding his bike and while he was in between CCTV cameras and eyewitnesses they then said that he went into the dream himself
and his death was ruled in accidental droning no further investigation on his case was scheduled until January of 2022 when a formal inquest was planned to look into the handling of the case and to determine which of the information included in his investigation would be made public knowledge distraught and mourning her only child Fiona Donahoe began a long campaign to make sure that everything found during the investigation was made public knowledge but it would be a long couple of years for her first the family became the target of online conspiracies who said that Noah had
been victim of a loyalist gang the rumors spread so wildly that several MPS came out to ask people to stop spreading them and to be more respectful and considerate of a family in mourning the rumors have since died down but as it always is with the internet some people won't let these conspiracy theories rest Fiona is still holding on to hope that everything uncovered during the investigation into her son's death will be made public and she and the family will have access to everything and be able to form their own opinions about what fate the
fail nor Donahue a preliminary hearing on the inquest was held in December of 2021 where the courts determined that the police's request to keep some of the information redacted would more than likely be upheld about 200 people came out to protest this but 200 would turn into several thousand in August 2022 when the Court ruled to uphold the Privacy agreement and kept some information in his case redacted Fiona Donahoe believes that this is an attempt to cover up some of the circumstances of Noah's death but the police claim that it's only to keep some of
the ways that information within investigations are handled and to better protect the community this decision has greatly divided the population with many siding with Fiona the North Belfast MP4 Sinn Fein who addressed the thousands of people gathered in support of Fiona and her family said quote the family deserves truth and transparency because make no mistake about it there are serious questions that remain unanswered concerning every single aspect of Noah's disappearance and the subsequent investigation Justice demands openness and Justice demands transparency but the latest update in this case came in September of this year when another
judge High Court judged Mr Justice Michael Humphries reviewed the case and upheld the decision to keep some of the information redacted in his ruling he said quote there is nothing in the material that has been redacted which is of central relevance to the questions being determined by the inquest by contrast disclosure of the redacted material would give rise to a real risk of serious harm to the public interest the representatives of the next of Ken can be reassured that nothing has been redacted which shows that any third party was involved in Noah donoho's death nor
that would suggest there has been any cover-up in the course of the investigation whether we'll ever get all the information or not it doesn't change the events of that evening or change the fact that a young 14 year old boy who was on his way to meet his friends and at the start of a very promising life somehow ended up in a storm drain that should have been locked and that life was tragically cut short we can only hope that one day Noah donahoe's family will finally find the answers they so desperately seek foreign
