A judge has warned about potentially serious consequences over any speculative social media posts in advance of an inquest into the death of Belfast boy Noah Donohoe.<\/p>\n
The 14-year-old was found dead<\/a> in a storm drain in north Belfast<\/a> in June, 2020, six days after he went missing as he cycled to meet friends.<\/p>\n Mr Justice Rooney, who is the coroner in the case, was speaking in advance of the start of the inquest, which will be heard by a jury, on January 19th.<\/p>\n The case has attracted high levels of public interest, following a large-scale search to find Noah and the subsequent unexplained nature of his death.<\/p>\n Noah\u2019s mother, Fiona Donohoe, is hoping the coroner\u2019s case will provide answers to some of the outstanding questions surrounding the death of her son, who was a pupil at St Malachy\u2019s College in Belfast.<\/p>\n Mr Justice Rooney read out what he termed a social media warning during a preliminary hearing in Belfast\u2019s Royal Courts of Justice on Friday.<\/p>\n He said no one should engage in any social media activity which may potentially prejudice the inquest. He warned of serious consequences for the progress of the inquest, as well as for any person responsible for posts.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve been at pains to emphasise the importance and risks of social media posts about the inquest,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cSome PIPs (properly interested parties) have raised issues about recent social media posts and they may . . . require to be explored in some more detail in due course.<\/p>\n \u201cHowever, it bears repeating that no one, whether involved in the inquest or in the general public, should engage in any social media activity which might prejudice the inquest process, particularly given the proximity of the inquest.<\/p>\n \u201cThe consequences of such activity could be serious, not only for the progress of the inquest, but also for any person engaged in inappropriate social media activity.\u201d<\/p>\n A number of outstanding issues and updates in relation to the case were also heard on Friday. However, work is being focused on the inquest starting as scheduled.<\/p>\n Further review hearings have been planned to take place next Thursday and Friday. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A judge has warned about potentially serious consequences over any speculative social media posts in advance of an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":236613,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[4501,61,60,112],"class_list":{"0":"post-236612","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-belfast","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236612\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/236613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}