Noah was 14 when his naked body was found in a storm drain tunnel in north Belfast in June 2020.
A CCTV operator has described how difficult it is to track people on city centre cameras as he gave evidence at the inquest into the death of Belfast schoolboy Noah Donohoe.
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.
Giving evidence at Belfast Coroner’s Court on Wednesday, CCTV operator Neill Gibson was asked about how he was tasked during the search to check recordings from cameras for signs of Noah.
Mr Gibson was asked by Brenda Campbell KC, for Noah’s mother Fiona, why he had managed to identify Noah on a number of cameras before he left his shift at 6am but did not spot other sightings caught on the system, which were identified later that morning by another operator.
He told the inquest: “People do not understand the intricacies.”
Mr Gibson explained how operators had to make assumptions about how long it might take for someone to travel between camera locations and what route they might take.
And he explained how some cameras may have been facing the wrong direction or left zoomed-in by the operator at the time of the recording for a particular purpose.
Mr Gibson told the jury: “All these things have to be taken into consideration.”
He told the court he was an experienced operator who used to work as a police officer.
When asked by Ms Campbell about the urgency of his attempt to find Noah on the footage, he said: “Every child is automatically classed as a high-risk person and treated accordingly.”
And he disagreed with Ms Campbell that it was easier than normal to identify people on CCTV at the time of Noah’s disappearance because it was “Covid time” and the streets were relatively empty.
Answering questions from Donal Lunny KC, for the PSNI, he said: “I worked to the best of my ability at the time and with the information I received at the time.”
The inquest, which is being heard with a jury, is now in its 18th week.
It has heard how Noah had set off on his bike from his home in south Belfast on the evening of Sunday June 21 2020 planning to meet two friends in the Cavehill area in the north of the city.
However, he was later seen on CCTV footage cycling along York Road. The last sighting of him was in Northwood Drive.
Police believe Noah entered the nearby Premier Drive stream culvert.
His naked body was found around 600 metres further down the storm drain tunnel at a Northern Ireland Railways depot almost a week later on June 27.
A post-mortem examination found the cause of death was likely to be drowning.
