Eight key points after Noah Donohoe inquest week eight

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The inquest into the death of the schoolboy at Belfast Coroner’s Court, which is being heard with a jury, has just finished its eighth week.

Eight key points after week eight of inquest into death of Noah Donohoe

1. A family has denied trying to freeze Noah Donohoe’s social media accounts, after their shared email address was linked to the request to do so. The inquest into the death of the schoolboy at Belfast Coroner’s Court heard this past week that Noah’s mother Fiona Donohoe was effectively “locked out” of her son’s Instagram account by the action.
2. On Thursday, the jury inquest heard evidence from three witnesses who are to remain anonymous. M1 refers to a witness who was a pupil at St Malachy’s at the time of Noah’s disappearance, M2 is his sister and M3 is their mother. Over their three statements it was established that a request had been put to tech company Meta that owns Instagram to memorialise Noah’s Instagram account, which effectively freezes it and retains the information in it at that time.
3. Brenda Campbell KC, representing Ms Donohoe, said that as a result of the memorialisation “the day after she learned that her child had died she had no access to any of his private social media”, and Ms Donohoe was “locked out”. Ms Campbell said Ms Donohoe was concerned “someone had done this to deliberately deprive her and us of that access” to Noah’s accounts.
4. Toxicologists also told the inquest this week that it cannot be ruled out that Noah may have had drugs in his system at the time of his death. The forensic analysts said there was no evidence that the schoolboy was under the influence of drugs or alcohol, but the presence of some substances including so-called “designer drugs” cannot be excluded because of the limits of testing.
5. Forensic scientist Amy Eleanor Quinn, who carried out a toxicological analysis on samples from Noah’s body in July 2020, gave evidence to the inquest at Belfast Coroners Court on Wednesday, alongside Dr Simon Elliott, consultant forensic toxicologist, who carried out a review and further testing of samples in November 2024.
6. In a joint statement they agreed that Ms Quinn had found evidence of a small amount of alcohol in Noah’s blood but that this was consistent with having been generated by the body after death and there was no reason to believe he had consumed alcohol in the hours before he died.
7. They further agreed “there is no toxicological evidence that the deceased was under the influence of drugs at the time of his death within the range of screening performed”. They also agreed that “it is not possible to exclude that drugs not included in the scope of analysis may have been present at the time of his death”.
8. The inquest will resume next week.

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