{"id":611209,"date":"2026-05-30T00:13:16","date_gmt":"2026-05-30T00:13:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/611209\/"},"modified":"2026-05-30T00:13:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-30T00:13:16","slug":"noah-donohoe-inquest-independence-of-expert-witness-questioned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/611209\/","title":{"rendered":"Noah Donohoe inquest: Independence of expert witness questioned"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Other expert witnesses at the inquest have disagreed with Benn&#8217;s view about the type of screen used at the culvert at the time of Noah&#8217;s death.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Benn has favoured the department&#8217;s use of a debris screen, with wider bar spaces, as a preferred flood prevention measure.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The inquest has heard that this type of screen enables people to enter it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Other expert witnesses have told the inquest that they believe a security screen, with narrower bar spaces, should have been used at the site to prevent unauthorised access.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But Benn and witnesses from the Department for Infrastructure have told the inquest that they believe security screens pose a greater risk of potential entrapment.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Benn also told the inquest that it was &#8220;my mistake&#8221; to inform the inquest that the death of a man at a culvert in England was linked to a security screen at the site.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">When it was pointed out to the witness that there was no security screen issue at the English site at the time of the tragedy, he replied, &#8220;there&#8217;s an error on my part&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The coroner, Mr Justice Rooney, pointed out to Benn that three examples of culvert related deaths he (the witness) highlighted to the inquest were not arising from security screens.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Officials from the Department for Infrastructure watched from the public gallery as Benn gave his evidence to the inquest.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He is due to complete his evidence at a future date.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Other expert witnesses at the inquest have disagreed with Benn&#8217;s view about the type of screen used at&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":611210,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-611209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=611209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611209\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/611210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=611209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=611209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=611209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}