Recordings of anonymous phone calls made to police about an attempt to sell Noah Donohoe’s laptop while the schoolboy was missing have been played at his inquest.<\/p>\n
One woman told Belfast Coroner’s Court that she had not made the calls, despite a claim from another witness.<\/p>\n
The inquest into the death of the schoolboy, which is being heard with a jury, has now entered its 10th week.<\/p>\n
Noah, a pupil at St Malachy’s College, was 14 when his naked body was found in a storm drain tunnel in north Belfast in June 2020, six days after he left home on his bike to meet two friends in the Cavehill area of the city.<\/p>\n
A post-mortem examination found the cause of death was likely to be drowning.<\/p>\n
Noah’s mother Fiona Donohoe has attended court every day of the inquest.<\/p>\n
Proceedings resumed on this afternoon with evidence from anonymous witnesses about calls made to police in the days after Noah disappeared.<\/p>\n
A statement from witness AC2 was read to the court.<\/p>\n
The witness said he did not know Noah but had got to know another witness, AC3, through playing online bingo during lockdown in June 2020.<\/p>\n
The statement said AC3 had visited him at his father’s flat on 21 June 2020, when Daryl Paul had arrived and attempted to sell them a laptop.<\/p>\n
Paul, of Cliftonville Avenue, has previously pleaded guilty to stealing a rucksack containing Noah’s laptop and schoolbooks.<\/p>\n
The statement said Paul told them he found the laptop at the Arts College in Belfast.<\/p>\n
The witness said: “The fact that there was no charger and it wasn’t his laptop rang alarm bells for me.”<\/p>\n
AC2 said he had no interest in buying the laptop. His statement said AC3 and Daryl Paul then left the flat at the same time.<\/p>\n
The court then heard that days later the witness was told by AC3 that the laptop sounded the same as one which Noah had been carrying when he disappeared.<\/p>\n
AC2 said after they spoke to another friend, they decided to report the matter to police.<\/p>\n
The statement said: “I remember feeling sick about the whole thing.”<\/p>\n
The statement said AC3 had then made an anonymous phone call to police while in her car.<\/p>\n
AC3 then gave evidence at the inquest.<\/p>\n
She said she had heard recordings of the call made to police.<\/p>\n
She said: “I can say I did not make this call to police, it does not sound like my voice on the call.”<\/p>\n
Counsel to the coroner Peter Coll asked the witness why she believed AC2 and Paul had given statements claiming she was the one who had contacted police.<\/p>\n
She said: “I think the two of them are spoofing.”<\/p>\n
Recordings of two anonymous phone calls, on 24 and 25 June, were then played to the jury.<\/p>\n
In the first recording, the caller reported an attempt by Paul to sell the laptop.<\/p>\n
The caller said Paul had a plastic bag containing a rucksack, the laptop, a green North Face coat and a schoolbook with Noah Donohoe’s name on it.<\/p>\n
The caller said: “I’m just really worried about this guy. If he knows something about where that boy is.”<\/p>\n
In the second recording, the caller expressed concern that the information from the previous call had not been acted upon.<\/p>\n
Mr Coll asked AC3: “Did you make that phone call?”<\/p>\n
The witness said: “No, I didn’t realise there was another call until today.”<\/p>\n
The inquest continues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Recordings of anonymous phone calls made to police about an attempt to sell Noah Donohoe’s laptop while the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":373975,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-373974","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373974","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=373974"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373974\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/373975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}