The Strange Disappearance of Noah Donohoe

[Laughter] [Music] hey adam here from top mysteries and welcome back to the channel this disappearance we're going to be talking about today it's very odd and i've thought a lot about the best way to present this one and i've settled on changing the format because i think doing it this way just does the incident a bit more justice uh before we get into this i just want to start this by saying there seems to have been a lot of police bashing around this disappearance and this isn't the place for that just try and keep things as constructive as possible is what i'm getting at so here's what we're gonna be looking at this is noah donahue and he disappeared on the 21st of june this year under very unusual circumstances six days after his disappearance his body was found uninjured and completely closeless in a storm drain close to where he disappeared from we're going to be exploring this incident day by day as the incident was unfolding starting from the 24th of june when the press really started to ramp up reporting all of the information in this video i've collect from a lot of press outlets and to the best of my knowledge these are all of the facts surrounding nose disappearance until the current time all of the sources can be found in the description below and i'll have a notice on the screen somewhere when i'm citing a quote or i am paraphrasing information from the press and when it's just me talking that wouldn't be there and also it's just worth saying as well that if you feel like i've missed anything then feel free to leave a comment and i looked at my pinned comment with any amendments that you feel necessary so do check that out just in case just a point on that as well make sure what you're saying is referenced with an actual link or i'm gonna have to disregard it so i said then we're gonna start on the 24th of june when the reporting starts to ramp up so this is from belfast live noah started his bike journey in south belfast and was last seen on northwood road in the north of the city police believe that he may have suffered a head injury after falling from the bike and the reason they're saying that right off the bat now is because um noah then exhibited strange behavior afterwards um you know essentially shedding clothing and then somehow managed to travel too and crawl into a storm drain where he then drowned so chief inspector gavin k patrick said this we believe noah left his home in south belfast on sunday the 21st of june at approximately half 5 p.m noah left his home on his black apollo mountain bike wearing a black skateboarding helmet khaki green north face jacket gray sweatshops with an emblem up with an emblem on one leg a tie-dye blue hoodie nike trainers with a bright yellow tick and carrying a khaki rucksack i apologize now by the way because um this isn't my area i'm not from this area so if i get if i pronounce the place name's wrong then you'll have to forgive me for that noah was seen on ormeux avenue at 5 45 pm on sunday evening he is then sighted again on royal avenue heading towards york street a short time after noah was then seen on north queen street heading towards the limestone road at 5 57 pm an eyewitness believes they saw a young male matching noah's description fall off his bike sunday evening possibly sustaining a head injury in the vicinity of north queen street yorkshire but we do not know the specific time we believe noah got back on the bike cycling into northwood road where he then abandons all of his clothing as he has seen a short time later cycling while colotless we believe noah then dropped his bike and left the area on foot there has been no further confirmed sightings of nowhere since 8 minutes past 6 p.m on sunday police officers supported by air support units police dogs and our tactical support group have been searching the area alongside community rescue service colleagues and local volunteers noah's family and police are very concerned for noah as this is completely out of character we need help from the public to find him if you have any information please contact police immediately on 101 quoting the reference number 1619 of 21 june 2020. sir noah was wearing a helmet when he fell off the bike and police believed that it sustained a head injury you know because at this moment in time what else makes sense that this behavior was only exhibited you know shed in the clubs was only exhibited after he'd fallen from the bike so then after he falls from the bike he gets back up mounts the bike again cycles into northwood road where he abandons all of his clothing uh it's not all at once it looks like it's been shedded as he's gone further he then eventually abandons the bike and leaves on foot however and we'll there'll be more on this later but right now we're just progressing day by day so i can share my thoughts at the time and the reporting up to that point so i think this is an interesting way of doing it but the postmortem later showed that there wasn't a head injury and also just kind of people are interested about this on this channel it doesn't appear that the search dogs ever found no ascent which is it is a point of interest right so let's move to the 25th of june and the following day and i titled this one rumors about missing teen distressing so this information is from the bbc but the premise is that um rumors started circulating around this disappearance because it is very strange and you can see why rumors would start to speculate you know on suspicions of foul player etc obviously the article doesn't actually mention what the rumors were but this does seem to sure that the public were finding it odd you know and then they were just speculating as to what may have happened so according to the bbc superintendent clark said this it's not entirely clear why noah traveled to the area where he went missing he went to school in north belfast but at this time i can find no connection between the northwood area and noah's knowledge of north belfast he then went on to say that police have received a significant amount of dashcam footage police have a number of hypotheses as to what may have happened the one that we are majoring on is that he has in somewhere suffered a head injury which led him to being disoriented so obviously noah hadn't been found at this time and the bbc then just said the search is still ongoing and specialist teams are still out there police officers supported in the air and by police dogs are still out searching and you know just i think it's worth repeating here that the dogs did not find a scent so just as a very brief timeline of what we have so far left his home at half past five he was then seen passing through army avenue belfast around quarter six he crossed through the heart of the city along royal avenue and then onto north street he then made his way to the north of the city going along north queen street eyewitnesses then reported seeing a young man that fit knowledge description falling off his bike in the north queen street york road area he was then seen riding his bike after having abandoned the clothing and then at this point from what we understand it appears that ten past six was um the last time he was seen when he got off the bike and continued on foot let's go to the next day the 26th of june this one's titled more of missing boys belongings found and this is from the bbc so noah was last seen in areas close to shaw road at 11 minutes past 6 p.m where it looks like they recovered knows khaki rucksack containing a lenovo laptop and a copy of the book 12 rules for life by jordan peterson superintendent clarke said that the items were now being examined by specialist teams and were found after information was given by a member of the public there will be more on that later at this point the police were still suspecting that noah had simply fallen from the bike and had sustained that head injury and it also seems we can be fairly certain that the items were definitely found near shaw road as that continued to be the main area of searching after that so sean mccary then he's the head of operations at the community research service and they'd been assisting the police so he then said i would say to anyone listening anywhere in belfast the days have gone past we need to make sure that when that we're not just thinking he's in north belfast or that it's in that particular area we also have to assume that noah could have moved into other areas and not know where he is or be confused so anywhere in belfast people keep your eyes open and have a look in your house and garden to see that there's nobody there that shouldn't be there and obviously what they're saying there now is is consistent with the head injury approach you know sean's telling people to search the properties in case nowhere is in that state of confusion and you know just entered accidentally so i thought so far then from the information that we have present currently at tower report and this will change as we go through but currently so far noah's behavior does seem to be consistent with a head injury because you know the behaviors presented were completely out of the ordinary at this point the police weren't sure why noah was where he was so what was the purpose of noah's trip we know later that he didn't actually suffer a head injury okay then that was due to the postmortem letter released and it just didn't seem to add any clarity in favor of that hypothesis so the question needs to become then what could lead a person to removing all of their clothing or rather shedding it as they progress you know getting on the bike a short distance further dumping the bike and then heading into a storm drain where we later drowned it's also worth mentioning at this stage that i do believe that in this storm drain the water isn't very deep at all so it's not like you know it was neck high or anything like that i don't believe it was very deep i think we're talking like shin maybe something like that so a couple of things right off the bat that this could have been then it could have been a head injury but that seems to have been ruled out now so what else could have happened that caused him to shed clothing was he too hot was he hypothermic was there disorientation confusion some sort of mental break it's not clear but we can say that the weather on that day in belfast it had 17 degrees celsius highs 12 celsius lures and was 14 celsius average so it seems to me that those temperatures you can rule out both being too hot or suffering from hypothermia so then you have to ask well where did this disorientation or confusion come from because noah being in some sort of dazed or confused state must almost certainly be true here so why was this the case you know you would imagine that if he had sustained that head injury it would have been clear in the postmortem so again why was noah confused or suffering from a mental break it's not clear that he was by the way that's speculation i just want to make that clear so you have to transform that question then to say well could there have been any underlying health issues that were present and if there were i haven't come across that information and it's also worth saying that noah's family in particular know his mother and she's been very very open with the press because even today at the time we're recording she had she doesn't have answers so you know if if noah had underlying health conditions or mental health problems or anything like that i do fully believe that noah's mother would have told the press because it would these kind of things normally come up very early because you know it kind of creates this sense of emergency and this we need to find this person right now you know early on in the search so i don't believe there was any underlying health issues the only other thing i could really think of off the top of my head was perhaps ingesting some kind of substance that may have contributed to that behavior but again there's no evidence of that thus far and you would imagine that something like that would have come up on the toxicology report but it doesn't seem to have at least not that we've been told and you would imagine if the police wanted to resolve this incident with the public you know and to get them to stop speculating to tell them i think they would probably make people aware that something came up in the toxicology report but they didn't so the question in its simplest form then needs to be why did noah end up drowning in a storm drain with what seems to be no injuries present what could have caused this so let's go to the 27th of june then and i've titled this one body found in search for missing teenager this is from the bbc a body believed to be that of missing teenager noah donohue was found in a storm drain in north belfast police have said while at this time officials didn't have any official identification they believed it was noah and it did in fact end up being noah superintendent clark first of all he reiterated that he did not believe that foul player had occurred here because you know from the scene it didn't appear that there was any third party and it also seems that rumors of foul play were spreading again and people in general were finding the whole incident off and it's you know it's obvious why it's clear why so in response to that clark said it's disappointing that i again need to comment about people circulating a number of rumors about noah's disappearance which are completely without foundation this type of commentary and rumor is distressing for noah's family and is unhelpful so at this point you know the authorities were still of the opinion that noah may have just fallen from the bike causing an injury which caused him to abandon his clothing and head to this location so this takes us to the 28th of june and it seems as though the authorities had made some progress now and that they had figured out where noah had entered the storm during but we're still trying to piece together his final movements this is from the the belfast telegraph they stated that as officers continue to scour cctv footage and troll through data on his laptop they don't believe there was any foul play involved in noah's passing but they are still trying to discover why exactly he entered the underground drains so just to clarify then the authorities thought process as per reports on the 28th of june seemed to be that they didn't know why noah had entered the storm drain but they seem to be certain that foul play had not occurred here they were still heavily leaning into the idea that noah must have been hurt as a result of the fall from the bike which caused him to exhibit all of this odd behavior so the belfast telegraph also collected some more details they reported that noah's body was discovered in the pitch dark storm drain complex in the shore road area yesterday morning that being the 27th local sources said his body was found at around 4 to 10 in the morning in a network of underground drains close to shore road the drains cover an area of almost one kilometer so the paper also suggested that while it's not known how the authorities knew where noah had entered the drain they'd been examining cctv in the area and may have caught a glimpse of him nearby or entering so they also stated one line of inquiry is believed to be that noah either entered the stone drain for shelter on the sunday evening of his disappearance or that he was concussed and confused following an earlier fall superintendent clark said that the specialist teams that had been deployed into the drains had found it extremely challenging to navigate he also added that the location that noah was found was very different from where he entered and that they were very confident that that they knew his precise point of entry he said we did have access to the storm during complex and it has been searched over the last number of days before we got to the end of the complex it's an extremely challenging environment in which to work and that is why it has taken the length of time to go through that complex they were working in the pitch black and there was a lot of ground to cover in my 30 years in the police this is one of the most unusual missing person inquiries that i have dealt with an investigation into the circumstances of noah's disappearance is still continuing but there is no evidence to suggest foul play superintendent clark then also added that the shots and the cut belonging to noah are still missing and i don't think they've been found today actually i think they're still missing so there's obviously a lot to think about at the moment then and i can see why clark said that in his 30 years on the job this is one of the most unusual cases that he's been involved with it seems to me that because the police stated that they are very confident that they know where noah entered the storm drain and they were confident that foul play wasn't involved i can only imagine that means that they'd seen him alone near or entering the drain i can only imagine that to be the case because otherwise very confident wouldn't make a lot of sense it's also worth pointing out that clark made it clear that someone in order to get in would have to have made a proactive effort to do so meaning that it doesn't appear that it was just as simple as walking it and why noah would then make his way right to the very end of this pitch black kind of tight space i have no idea so belfast live reported that the community began searching for noah on the 23rd but the irish news stated that it actually started on the 22nd which does seem to make some sense actually because while you can report a person missing before 24 hours i don't know how much action is taken until that time has lapsed so let's just take a step back from the storm drain at 11 minutes past 6 pm on the 21st of june it was reported that noah was last seen heading towards northwood linear park this is a densely wooded area it's very odd that noah would first strip most or all of his clothing and then head into the woods or at least towards the area though it's at least somewhat understandable if the assumption of a head injury rang true so i can see why that was the current line of thinking by the authorities however as we'll get to soon the postmortem would reveal that noah had not sustained any severe head injury is the way it read which honestly just serves to take this incident into bizarre territory now because all of a sudden things make less sense because if you can say that there was no head injury present or the way they phrased it there was no severe head injury which we later find out means it doesn't look like there was a head injury um you know things make less sense but we've got a little bit further to go before we actually get there so let's move to the 29th of june now then i'll be keeping the name of this individual private here but more information started to be made public concerning noah's belongings thus far the way it was reported in the way it seemed was that noah fell off the bike rudd some more then abandoned the bike along with all of the clothing however according to the bbc miss care told bbc news that she found noah's bike at her home on the same road he disappeared from at 8 pm that night the storm drain where noah's body was found lies behind her garden miss care thought the bike had been left by some local boys she said i went out and lifted it off the ground because it was just lying at the back of my car i didn't think any more of it i thought the parents all the boys would come and get it when i went to work the next morning it was still there i came home and started to look on social media and saw the missing boy she was then alert to what happened and she reported the finding of the bike to the authorities so if he was paying attention to that the items of clothing wasn't mentioned so we can only assume that they weren't in her garden and now it's not completely clear where they were found in relation to the bike though i think that we can be fairly certain that they were still discovered around that general area that the bike was located so the 30th of june i titled this one the final sighting and this information comes from the irish news again i'm going to be keeping the name of this individual private two but on the 30th of june a miss l came forth and spoke to the irish news and it appears that she may have been one of the final people to see noah i quote miss l told how she saw the teenager riding his bike while closeless past their home in north belfast she called for her husband but by the time he came noah was gone and only his bike was seen lying in the street a cctv camera owned by miss l captured this incident noah had cycled to a cul-de-sac on the residential street where it is believed he walked behind some of the houses and entered a storm drain he is thought to have discarded his clothing earlier after falling off his bike and sustaining a head injury leaving him disoriented so at this part in the research i was actually a little bit confused now because that statement by miss l seems to be in conflict with the statements made by miss care miss elle is suggesting that the bike was lying there in the street while miss kissed it that she looked at the bike behind her car perhaps i'm just reading into that too much and i'm you know maybe i'm just looking a little bit too much into that and the specifics of this situation have been lost but those two statements with no further elaboration or context don't seem to be gelling very well the bike obviously can't simultaneously be out in the street and behind miss k's car right you know unless it was moved which i doubt or again the specifics have just been lost in the report in there and miss l does quite literally mean that she saw it behind the car on the street you know but just wasn't expressed in the article miss k also said that quite a few people saw him and i believe that she's referring to those present in her living room but that's not made clear either you know i don't really know why some journalists choose to make these things ambiguous if something very specific happened where details are important it shouldn't be left to the reader to fill out the blanks and to use their own interpretation you know what i mean i feel like the reporter should spell it out for you rather than you than getting it wrong and speculating or me actually mean in this case you know anyway this article then states that missile then looked out again but only the bike was on the ground she said it was so quick it was just a flash going past by the time i got out to look he was gone she also said that noah from what she saw didn't seem to be in any distress so it's difficult to know what to think about this on the one hand you could say you know it's kind of weird that no action was taken here um seeing a young person or anyone really for that matter on a bike in public without clothing i think that does warrant some kind of action um you know to see if that person's all right i don't know and from what she said he did seem to disappear pretty quickly which is odd you know maybe he was just trying to get out of sight quickly it's not clear although you know it's weird because if you put yourself in that situation where you just seen that unfold you had no idea this person was about to go missing or anything like that um what would you have done the answer to that is probably different for everybody so on the first of july then and this is from the belfast telegraph and the mirror it looks like the funeral was on the festival i did have a look at some videos of this and it was actually amazing just to see how many people turned out and it was nice to see that there was just a lot of support there you know it was it was really nice to see so apart from noah's funeral there wasn't much in the way of updates that day as to what may have happened um but the belfast telegraph reported and i quit the initial theory that noah had fallen off his bike suffered a head injury and had been left confused and disoriented turned out to be tragically accurate i didn't come across any of the sources that said that so i'm not sure what they'd seen or why they were so confident of that because at this point it's a complete hypothesis you know rather than fact um and later on the postmortem didn't seem to provide any clarity in favor of that so i'm not sure why they said that i think that's pretty damn irresponsible reporting actually to to just say that as a matter of fact you know that's not good i don't know why they did that so still on the first the statement also seems to be in contrast a little bit with what was reported by the mirror who stated that uh superintendent clark said an investigation into the circumstances of noah's disappearance is still continuing but there is no evidence to suggest foul player so if the superintendent is basically suggesting that no conclusions have been drawn yet no conclusions have been reached at this point i'm not really sure what the belfast telegraph would do in there at all so there wasn't much in the way of reporting on the second but on the third all i really came across was some amount of skepticism of the reporting thus far it seems that because of some of the history concerning northern ireland that i don't really want to get into in this video some individuals seem to be suggesting that the idea that foul player was not involved had been announced without merit and too early there was a change.org petition circulating demanding justice for noah whose goal seemed to be to reinvigorate the police to have a look at the possibility of foul player i'm going to keep all names private but here was just a couple of reasons given by people for signing up to this petition there are too many unanswered questions the unqualified statement before autopsy that no foul player was committed is cause for consent i as a parent i'm very conscious that we have to be respectful of noah's mum i just feel that too many questions remain unanswered and being a parent myself i feel it's in the public's interest to know what happened language is very important and i think it's absolutely key to be very specific whenever you're talking about anything like this okay and it can be very difficult it can be very difficult to do that but the first commenter there stated the unqualified statement before autopsy that no foul play was committed is cause for concern i actually think that might be a bit unfair here because the authorities from what i've come across so far they haven't said that there was no foul player what they actually said was that they don't believe there was any foul play the former indicates definitively while the latter is just suggesting from what they saw they didn't believe it was the case it might only be a very subtle difference in phrasing but it's actually quite drastic in terms of meaning and intent so i think we've got to be so careful with that obviously i actually have no idea if foul player was involved or not but i can say that this whole incident was very strange which superintendent clark did agree with so there were no real updates until the seventh other than noah's family asking people to stop speculating on lan which she can actually appreciate the family will have obviously wanted to have their own space and to be able to grieve in peace without all of the messy noise everywhere though with that being said the family themselves at this point may have still felt that they were unanswered questions because as reported by the bbc the family of noah donahue is urging anyone with information on his missing clothes or any events surrounding his passing to contact them and it's obviously worth mentioning here that his green north face jacket and gray sweatshots are still missing and that's actually a very relevant question as well where did the missing items end up sir andrew murphy from relatives for justice said if people could keep searching for the clothes that have not been found that would be great and any cctv footage is most important if people could check their dash cams doorbells that have coverage business premises cctv anything like that it would all be very useful to have a good timeline of events i'd never actually heard of relatives for justice before and they seem to provide support to those who need help negotiate through various legal and investigative mechanisms dealing with their loss it also looks like they provide therapeutic support counselling and just things of that nature so andrei also added how noah got into that storm drain is a question that is unanswered it is an area that is quite difficult to get access to so that is of particular concern at the end of the article the bbc added on tuesday police said results from a post-mortem examination had been shared with noah's family and that's an investigation into the circumstances of his disappearance is continuing so at this point there wasn't actually that much uh being reported on now up until the 17th of july so 10 days after the last update and it was on the 17th when the findings of the postmortem were released in addition to that other details were starting to be revealed about the nature of noah's trip initially the authorities weren't sure why noah had made the trip in the first place but according to the bbc noah was traveling to cave hill country park to meet friends on the day of his disappearance according to the irish news noah was doing work towards his duke of edinburgh award on the day he went missing and it is believed he brought his laptop to gain extra credits during his time off school noah's phone and laptop were also recovered by police and the family are keen to have these returned to them they have not been told if the authorities have examined the fund's gps the family believed that the phone's mapping system may have information on the final movements of the teenager now according to the irish times the post-mortem had revealed that noah had passed away as a result of drowning there's some interesting wedding now while traveling across the city he fell off his bike and may have hit his head he was then seen discarding his clothes and then continuing on the bike an action his family said was completely out of character this led to speculation that he may have suffered a head injury that could have been a factor in entering the storm drain where his body was eventually found andrea murphy from relatives for justice said the postmortem found the cause of passing and it's also revealed that he did not sustain a severe head injury so andre specifically stated a severe head injury does that mean that there was a minor injury present or none at all that should have been made completely clear you can't on the one hand tell people to stop speculating and then leave things completely up into speculation however even so that finding throws a spanner in the works of the leading hypothesis so the question still needs to be what could lead someone to remove their clothing and then to head into a storm drain as mentioned earlier if the weather causing hypothermia can be ruled out and the head injury hypothesis is now in trouble um then we need to be looking elsewhere i fully agree that noah must have been confused and completely disoriented for some reason but why perhaps this mental state was also the cause for falling off the bike rather than the other way around of course that completely relies on the idea that noah had not sustained a head injury serious enough to have caused this so this is not my area of expertise at all but the question does need to be posed could he have been suffering from some sort of nervous breakdown that then does raise many questions as to why that might have been the case symptoms of a nervous breakdown include a loss of hope and just generally not great thoughts there's also anxiety insomnia hallucinations mood swings panic attacks paranoia among others though typically and from what i understand a nervous breakdown normally causes a person to become a bit more reclusive they'll avoid meeting people and just generally isolating themselves rather than what happened to noah a psychotic brick on the other hand seems to be when a nervous breakdown gets really bad and triggers psychosis um so there's three main symptoms for this hallucinations delusions and confused thoughts hallucinations of this nature can be presented in a number of different forms so you might see something that isn't there people who go through these kinds of bricks report hearing voices when in this kind of state some even experience a smell or taste or touch despite there being no source for that becoming delusional would mean that despite it being self-evidently being untrue you've gained some sort of unwavering belief in that very um so you might suddenly believe that someone is trying to get you or something like that and then act accordingly even though that's not the case at all while studying at uni psychosis did come up a number of times in my course uh again i'm not well vest on this subject or anything like that but from what i understood at the time the current research indicates that dopamine plays a major role in this um so just think of it as a chemical in the brain that the brain uses to transmit information between cells experts in the field are saying that um if there's a disruption in this process it could result in this kind of breakdown now in all fairness i'm not saying that this did happen to noah because i obviously don't know but it's worth exploring various avenues there's other problems with that by the way you know like i couldn't even begin to tell you how that may have happened again as far as i'm aware noah didn't seem to have any underlying health conditions because and you know again those things are normally made public early on during the search because it's something the searchers need to know about so it seems to me that pre-existing psychological causes can be ruled out they say that substance abuse can cause a break like this but typically i think it's stronger substances that do that and i would have imagined that there would have been evidence present of that you know in like the toxicology report or something like that so i'm a little bit doubtful on that one i'm not really sure what else could have caused it maybe some sort of sensory overload though i wouldn't have thought that would have led to a person drowning but if a head injury isn't the explanation then i'm not sure how that happened at all if a nervous breakdown or a psychotic break isn't what happened either and the authorities are certain that foul player wasn't involved then i can absolutely see why there's a lot of confusion here and it's hard to know where to go from there as well actually so the next update then is on july the 18th and i've titled this no head injury this day actually brought about a piece of significant information uh the irish news reported that an mp for north belfast john finney king i apologize if i've butchered that probably have but john said that noah had not suffered a head injury despite a theory put forward by the police that he may have suffered a concussion after the fall so it seems to me then that that hypothesis can be put to rest at first all i could really find was articles stating that he hadn't sustained a severe head injury which isn't specific enough but now according to the mp it looks like he hadn't sustained a head injury at all period which now means that this young man removed all of his clothing ditched it all and then was found in a storm drain six days later uninjured and we have absolutely no explanation as to what happened just let that sink in for a minute the irish news also revealed some further details and they said the green backpack contained his lenovo laptop and was recovered several days after the disappearance police said that it was recovered following information from a member of the public the family were told that it was to be examined by forensic experts but they have not been given any details since now have they been given any further details about its recovery i'm not really sure why the family weren't given that information um i think we'd all agree that noah's loved ones you know they have the right to know everything here so there was nothing of note that i could find on the 19th but on the 20th the irish news reported this more than four weeks after 14 year old noah donahue went missing in north belfast it is alarming that so many aspects of his passing remain unexplained noah's body was found in a storm drain in the shore road area of the city on june 27 six days after he disappeared while cycling in the area and police said at the time they did not believe foul play was involved however suggestions that noah sustained a concussion after reportedly falling from his bike causing him to remove his clothing and suddenly entering the storm drain were always difficult to understand as the irish news revealed last friday a postmortem found that noah had drowned but his family has not been able to confirm that the teenager suffered a head injury prior to his passing and i actually like and agree with this next part the public is entitled to expect that the missing elements of this story of noah donahue can be clarified and the request made by his grieving family addressed as soon as possible you know i completely agree with that statement um what i will say is this there seems to be a lot of information coming up to suggest that noah hadn't sustained a head injury at all which i think is pretty clear at this point let's be absolutely realistic if noah had obvious head trauma that that would have been pushed aggressively as the explanation by the authorities because at the end of the day having something that looks like it can't be explained away reasonably and adequately is just not a good look you know as someone that's scoured through newspapers of hundreds of disappearance cases now uh what i can tell you is that the authorities like to conclude things as fast as possible because when you have a situation like this it can cause panic and just an uncertainty which isn't good in general you know for public order the more i'm reading about this you know just the stranger it seems to get and it's very difficult to understand in a rational manner why noah removed all of the clothing including his shoes and then later entered and made his way through the entirety of a storm drain in absolute darkness it's very unsettling and it does bother me you know what could have caused him to do that so on the 23rd of july noah's mother released a statement and it was just clear that this was really tearing them up i can't imagine something like this happening and they're not having any answers at all as to what's gone on so this was the statement as reported in media last week the preliminary findings of the autopsy are that noah passed away as a result of drowning and that he did not suffer a severe head injury which makes sense he was wearing a helmet you know i know that's not absolutely foolproof but it makes it unlikely that you're gonna sustain a massive head injury you know from falling off the bike it then reads it is the family's hope that the inquest will assist in answering the outstanding questions of how noah was in a state of undress and how he came to pass away in a storm drain so we're on the 9th of august at this point and i titled this one frustration it seemed that there was what can only be described as like a media blackout there was nothing else that i could find on noah being reported from when did i say from the 23rd up until the 9th however noah's mother actually said something very interesting on facebook she said why do we not all wake up my son is gone we have no answer we have nothing please start questioning why i have no answers let's work together please simply ask why it's a great question and it's one that needs to be answered by the way uh still at this time on the 9th of august the family was still waiting on the return of the laptop and phone nor had they seen the cctv footage i can't even believe that that's the situation at this point but that is where they were on the 9th of august so the next update was on the 12th of august and i titled this one further frustration because you can literally just feel the frustration on behalf of noah's loved ones here and you know yet again his mother issued another appeal to the public asking for information northern ireland's deputy affairs minister michelle o'neill threw her support behind noah's family and stated i have met with noah's mother and her legal team and i've told them i will leave no stone unturned to help them find the truth understandably people are now looking for answers around the circumstances which surrounded noah's passing in particular the role of the authorities in investigating noah's disappearance and passing has been questioned by some all families are entitled to know the truth surrounding the passing of their loved ones and this must be the case for the family of noah donahue i could not agree more and i couldn't have said it better she then said i fully support the donohue family in their search for the truth about the passing of noah i will not rest until she has all the answers surrounding the loss of her son noah's memory deserves nothing less so six days later on the 18th of august noah's family just didn't seem to think that they were getting anywhere with this and it seems to me that the family may have been highly dissatisfied with the authorities because they started up social media accounts to draw attention to what was happening on their own the irish republican news reported this noah went missing in north belfast on the evening of sunday june 21st while cycling to meet friends for a youth project six days after he disappeared his body was found in a storm drain near an area where loyalists have been hostile to nationalist young persons at the time of his disappearance the authorities proposed a hypothesis that noah had suffered a change of personality after hitting his head while cycling causing him to suddenly scatter his possessions and clothing in a variety of locations following the discovery of his unclothed body authorities continued to insist that no foul play was involved seven weeks later the police have withdrawn their personality change theory but have provided little further information the paper then goes on to clarify that the family still had not seen the cctv footage nor had the laptop or phone been returned right so it seems now then at this stage if we haven't already we can finally rule out the head injury hypothesis because that appears to have just come to an impasse so the rumors that the press were talking about seem to be linked to foul play in regards to the loyalists doing this in northern ireland i do want to be clear though that at this time there doesn't seem to be any evidence in favor of that hypothesis from what we know so far of noah's discovery it doesn't appear that a struggle has taken place because the authorities have consistently maintained that there is no evidence in favor of that which as i said before just leaves us with a bizarre set of circumstances also while it's clear that this was the case anywhere it hadn't been explicitly said before noah hadn't just removed this clothing but he actually scattered them this actually reminds me in some ways of the disappearance of gaia purp from swannage not necessarily in terms of the actual circumstances barren a few but the circumstances behind her disappearance were equally as odd the authorities found hair scattered clothing on a coastal path and then two days later found their uninjured body not too far away from the clothing there was a lot of speculation about foul play in that case as well because otherwise it just didn't seem to make a lot of sense which obviously is the case here too um i'll leave a link in the description if you want to look at my video on that but back to noah though on the 21st of august i titled this one where the bbc managed to get a hold of some cctv footage that shows noah cycling that they only seem to have released this image rather than the footage itself the bbc also added some interesting information according to police the last confirmed sighting of noah was 11 minutes past six close to the storm drain at the back of northwood road in north belfast while the cctv timings suggest it took him 10 minutes to make the final leg of his journey the distance can be made on a bike in two and a half minutes it's not known what he was doing for the remainder of that time we'll find later on that this didn't appear to be the case and we'll find that the the time on the cctv camera was actually wrong according to the authorities but at this current time nobody knows that so the coroner said and i'm assuming this is based on cctv footage along with eyewitness testimony but he said he said that noah wasn't seen interacting with anyone else at any of the sightings and just to be clear there was never any mention of it looking like noah was being chased or anything like that so honestly you know what happened here now the republican irish news along with many other just individuals became quite skeptical and critical of the authorities and they started to ask some very hard questions as well this is what they had to say the police took six days to find noah yet they told the public no thanks for their help a past weather chat for belfast on timeanddate.com shows a very dry week before the weekend of his recovery yet authorities claimed inability to completely search the storm drain where he was eventually found because of flooding they were searching so feverishly yet were available enough to offer to search anybody's premises who requested it they continued to declare no foul play which we often saw as a cop-out from making the search a more critical operation did they search any houses what was the difficulty that prevented them from entering a storm drain which a teenager was deemed to waltz into then they asked was there really no foul player they state we desperately want the answer to be no no foul player but though this verdict is being run with it seems more like a convenient conclusion rather than a realistic one the explanation of his final moment never washed based on a couple vague to sketchy sightings the police flocked to the bizarre hypothesis that he fell off the bike hit his head and pretty much lost his mind thus led him to shed clothing and abandoned his bike and leave the area of his last sighting on foot i'd argue that's even stranger than that as well because he didn't just you know it didn't just shed and abandon the clothing it seems to have been scattered around as well um so i'm not entirely sure exactly what that means in terms of explaining what happened but it is vital we keep that in mind you know it's not like it doesn't appear that there was just one pile with all of the all of the clothing but they continue causing further concern was the non-transparency during the search and in the aftermath the police refused to divulge the following information about a strange phone call leading to the recovery of key belongings location of his mobile phone's recovery how he entered the storm drain and where he was found a point they claimed to know and the local police force's attitude towards the public's compassion in searching for the teen was in contrast to other missing person cases normally police encourage and work with the public whereas this time the public's assistance was dissuaded very early on first they encouraged the public to stick to searching their own premises then requested all public searches to cease a high percentage of police briefs was devoted to criticizing internet rumor spreading which seems a natural outcome with the lack of a realistic explanation given by authorities but they demanded their puzzling explanation to be the only explanation in fairness there were some good points there and it's not clear to me why the public's assistance was being dissuaded in this instance let's be reasonable though before we got the postmortem the official hypothesis of a head injury was a reasonable suggestion after the post-mortem yeah absolutely not however it is worth pointing out as we mentioned earlier the authorities did seem to drop that as their official stance though from what i've come across they never gave any further hypotheses whilst at the same time asking the public to stop speculating that is just not our human nature and curiosity works you know we're very curious and if they wanted the public to stop talking about their own various hypotheses they should have provided something more tangible you know or i've just been completely honest and said that they don't know yet the questions are piling up now though why did noah remove clothing and why did he fall from the bike i now don't believe that the fall resulted in the strange behavior but rather the fall was a part of the strange behavior so what caused that you know what caused noah to start exhibiting this odd behavior in the first place why did he enter the storm drain why did it take police six days to look at him if the authorities are so confident that foul play was not a factor at all then why are they being so quiet in terms of releasing information you'd think at the least the family would be brought up to speed i could completely understand the secrecy if there was suspicion of foul play but as they have made plainly clear that suspicion just isn't there it's odd so on the 23rd of august now and unfortunately i don't have full access to this article because they've put it under premium only which means you need a subscription to access it which isn't so great given the subjects let's be honest but anyway according to the belfast telegraph noah's rucksack was discovered by a previously convicted robber who then tried to sell the laptop inside the man didn't know to whom it once belonged and apparently cried when the police caught up with him it was this man that led the police to where he found the items he then made a witness statement and was never considered a suspect that might actually make a bit more sense then as to why the authorities didn't want to release that information to the public you know who were already speculating and on edge because to lend that convicted robber found the rucksack you can just imagine how that would have steered the pot so to speak so this next update comes on the 28th and i've titled this one no evidence of attack so the bbc and the irish times reported that a belfast court had now examined the disappearance and passing of noah and determined that there was no evidence that there was a struggle or any third-party involvement the coroner who was obviously well aware that this incident was by no means adequately explained at all stated that the investigations are continuing the family finally got to see some or all it's not clear of the cctv footage and had seen nine minutes worth of noah's final movements it's interesting and we already know this to some extent but the court acknowledged that there were blind spots in the footage particularly of interest at the time before they knew that the time was actually wrong the final leg of the journey from skegeneal avenue to his final destination was being called into question so this was the 10 minutes where they just didn't know where he was in a in a during a trip and distance that should have taken our two and a half minutes but as we said we later found out that the cctv camera was wrong or at least that's what the authorities are saying so we were also given a better idea as to what time certain items of clothing had been discarded this is from the bbc it was established that the teenager left his home on his bike at 41 minutes past five on the 21st of june previously if you remember we thought that had been at half past five 53 minutes past five he was last seen carrying his bag containing a laptop and books traveling alongside the at college near the corner of york street and frederick street subsequent footage shows noah traveling towards york gate by which stage noah is clearly seen to be no longer carrying his bag it's worth mentioning here that at 10 minutes to five so three minutes previously he still had everything noah then cycled along york street crossing great patrick street and the motorway before turning left into brutham street and then right along north queen street at three to six the teenager's fun was found by a member of the public close to a park at north queen street sir noah ditched the fun around four minutes after ditching the rucksack at 6 pm noah is seen cycling towards the grove well-being center at this point close to the junction with the shore road noah fell from his bike the car head a motorist stopped to assist noah when he got back on the bike one minute later he continued along the shore road without his green overcut this item of clothing has not been recovered noah was seen entering northwood crescent from skegeno avenue one minute later he was wearing a black cycling helmet a blue hoodie gray shorts and black trainers his helmet was found by a member of the public on northwood road while some of his remaining clothes were discovered by a member of the public lying on a wall lying on a wall further along the same road at three minutes past six noah is seen a short distance away the teenager is then seen on cctv going between two houses which leads to an area of waste of waste ground behind the houses the next hearing is scheduled for early november so it looks like nowhere removed everything else within the span of a couple of minutes that is just bizarre what was the cause of this behavior stepping away from the bbc uh the irish times then gave some more information about the storm drain a specific address is mentioned that i will keep private the coroner stated to me it seems likely that noah entered the stormtrooper into the rear of a particular house by lifting a metal drain cover which at that time was not secured i have examined the drain cover as of police officers and it seems entirely possible for noah to have been able to lift that cover and enter the drain system at that location noah's body was found by specially trained police officers between two drain access points within a section of the tunnel running under the translink access road the environment within the drain system can be described as challenging with the drain system back filling with water during intervals between low and high tides i consider that based upon all of the evidence performing at this stage and the evidence includes extensive cctv footage and witness statements that noah acted alone when he traveled to the northwood road and entered the drain system investigations however are ongoing and i've reassured the family this morning that further evidence will be assessed as it is received there is no evidence at present to suggest that any other person was involved in noah's disappearance and passing it looks then to me like the authorities have no real understanding of what happened i think that they know that this was odd and they just don't really know what to do with it so on the 10th of september now we're coming towards the end of everything we know so far the bbc all of this information came from the bbc so we land on the 10th that the storm drain noah was found in had been inspected the previous week but had an access hatch that remained unlocked experts have obviously said that the hatch should always be locked at all times so that begs the question was it just a mistake i can only assume it was the padlock was only placed on it after noah's discovery the authorities also stated that the time of one of the cctvs was wrong the final cctv showed him at 11 minutes past six but authorities declared that the actual time should have read three minutes past six meaning that there was no time to be accounted for at first we thought he'd spent eight minutes somewhere but that doesn't seem to be the case the time was just wrong so you can infer from that that no one else interfered with his journey the authorities also clarified that there was no one chasing him either so i mean i suppose we'll be waiting for that second court hearing in early november and then there will be the full inquest on the 18th of january i'll keep an eye out for them and we'll see if there's any further information to be known um i have just found as well just looking briefly now cause it's the 14th of september today at this time there's no new updates today but yesterday i found this by the belfast telegraph whose link i will just copy now so i have the reference this is what was reported the grieving mother of schoolboy noah donahue said yesterday she is still seeking answers about how her son passed away in june this year posting on social media she said she still did not know how sen maliki's college people noah knew of the existence of the storm drain in north belfast in which his body was found nor why did why he had discarded his clothes during his trip across the city she tweeted yesterday until factual evidence is found to say my noah knew of that storm train on northwood road i will keep asking for answers until factual evidence is found how my noah came to be in a state of undress i will keep asking for answers i mean i don't know to conclude this to be honest but i just i genuinely don't think that the authorities have any idea what happened to noah you know again i think that they know this was weird and i think they're having a very hard time explaining what happened you know this is one of those disappearances and we've covered a fair few on the channel now where it's just very difficult to explain without involving foul player despite there be no evidence at all of that there's no real way to conclude this now other than saying that this is all of the information as far as i'm aware this is all of the facts surrounding this disappearance uh if i've missed anything or if you think i've missed something then please do leave it in the comments below please do make sure it's sauce though or it's gonna have to be disregarded um but if you do source it and you leave a nice link there i'll add it to the pink comment as an amendment i mean other than that though thank you very much for watching uh please do subscribe if you haven't already and let's just hope that noah's family are able to uh you know hopefully they're able to receive answers and get some closure here but other than that cheers and i'll see you next time you

Channel: Top Mysteries

Views: 152,935

Keywords: The Strange Disappearance of Noah Donohoe, noah donohoe, noah donohoe missing, noah donohoe belfast, noah donohoe disappearance, noah donohoe disappeared

Id: 5rhm2J4E58M

Length: 56min 29sec (3389 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 16 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/imaloser1984]

This one has always confounded me. Seen at various intervals in different states of undress. I used to lean toward drugs or a mental break of some sort. Now I just don’t know. The storm drain being unlocked when it should have been locked just adds to the mystery.

[u/Business-Papaya8762]

I’m sad to say, I believe foul play was involved.