On a warm June evening in 2020, 14-year-old Noah Donohoe pedalled off to meet friends and never returned home. His body was later found in a storm drain — officially drowned. But in the Coroner’s Court on February 4, 2026, the inquest exploded with raw, haunting testimony: two neighbours recounting blood-curdling human screams tearing through the midnight silence, screams they are certain no fox or animal could make. Clashing police statements, a grieving mother’s unyielding fight, and forgotten details of a thoughtful boy lost in a self-help book all collide. Were those desperate cries Noah’s last?

The courtroom in Belfast Coroner’s Court fell into a stunned silence that February afternoon. Fiona Donohoe, the devoted mother who has sat through every single day of this long-awaited inquest, clutched her hands tightly in her lap. Her eyes, red-rimmed from years of sleepless nights and endless questions, fixed on the witnesses as their words cut through the air like a knife.

Tanya Brown, a local resident from Premier Drive in north Belfast, took the stand first. Her voice trembled slightly as she described the ordinary summer night that turned unforgettable. “I was lying in my bed reading,” she told the jury. “It was a warm night, so I had my bedroom window lying wide open. I heard what sounded like a scream… it didn’t sound as if it was close by, it sounded like it was some distance away. It sounded like a girl screaming.”

Moments later, she woke her husband Grant. Together they stepped into their back garden, the same garden overlooking the very wasteland where Noah’s body would be discovered days later. There, in the pitch-black stillness, they heard it again — a second scream. “We both went into the back garden,” Tanya continued, her words echoing in the hushed courtroom. “We stood in the garden, and that’s when I heard the second scream.”

When pressed by Brenda Campbell KC, counsel for the Donohoe family, Tanya was unequivocal. “Was there any doubt in your mind that what you were hearing at the time was a human?” “No doubt,” she replied firmly. “No doubts, no.” She dismissed any suggestion it could have been a fox or some wild animal. “I’m not familiar with the sound of a fox,” she said simply, but her certainty left no room for misinterpretation. These were human cries — desperate, piercing, the kind that haunt you forever.

Just days earlier, on February 2, another neighbour, Gemma McMullan from Northwood Parade, had given equally chilling evidence. She had been reading after tucking her own son into bed when the scream shattered the quiet. “Totally out of the blue, I heard a scream,” she recounted. High-pitched, it came from the back of her house, right near the wasteland and the storm drain that would become Noah’s final resting place. Gemma rushed to her bathroom, flung open the window and stared into the darkness. Security lights stayed off. Nothing moved. Pitch black. Silence returned — but that scream lingered.

Grant Brown added another layer of unease. Woken by his wife, he described a “muffled scream… like a girl’s scream.” Then, around 3am, a “white flash like a torchlight” lit up his kitchen window. Neighbours reported someone rattling a back door handle at the same time. Coincidence? Or something far more sinister unfolding in the shadows while a 14-year-old boy fought for his life?

The inquest jury — ordinary men and women chosen to find the truth after nearly six years of pain — listened in rapt horror. This wasn’t dry evidence. This was the sound of a boy’s final moments, perhaps, echoing through the Belfast night.

But how did we get here? Let’s go back to that fateful warm evening in June 2020.

Noah Peter Donohoe was a typical 14-year-old in so many ways — a pupil at St Malachy’s College in north Belfast, bright, kind, the sort of lad who made his single mother Fiona beam with pride. He loved cycling. He had friends. He was thoughtful beyond his years. But in the weeks before his disappearance, something had shifted.

Fiona told the inquest in emotional video evidence played earlier how her boy had become “so up and down”, “really huggy”. He would hug and kiss her repeatedly, telling her he loved her “a lot”. “All this day, he’s been really huggy,” she had said in her desperate 999 call that night. Noah had been reading obsessively — a self-help book his mother had bought him: 12 Rules for Life by Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson. He hadn’t put it down all week. He carried it in his backpack when he left home that Sunday afternoon around 5.40pm, along with his laptop, to meet two friends in the Cavehill area.

“He was quite taken with it at the time,” Fiona recalled. Friends later told the inquest Noah had discussed the book on walks, calling it “very important”. He talked about living life differently. Fiona insisted she had no concerns about the book — it was just a teenage boy finding his way. Yet police officers would later twist those details into something darker.

Noah pedalled off on his bike wearing a blue hoodie and trainers. He never came home.

By 9.44pm, Fiona was on the phone to police, her voice cracking with panic. The 999 call, played in full to the jury, captured a mother’s worst nightmare. “He’s never done this before,” she pleaded. “It’s totally out of character.” Officers arrived at the family home. Fiona described her son as “very emotional” that week. One sergeant noted how she said Noah had been “hugging and kissing” her a lot.

The search began immediately — but for Fiona, it felt agonisingly slow. Volunteers poured in. Helicopters circled. Appeals went out across Belfast. Noah’s face was everywhere: on posters, in newspapers, on social media. The community rallied, desperate to bring the smiling schoolboy home safe.

Six days of hell. Then, on June 27, the devastating news. Noah’s naked body was found in a storm drain tunnel in the Northwood Road area — the very wasteland near where those screams had rung out. A post-mortem confirmed drowning. Bruises and abrasions marked his forehead, hands, knees and elbows — consistent with being swept through the drain, pathologists said. No evidence of assault. No foul play officially.

But from the very beginning, questions swirled. Why had Noah’s bike, hoodie and trainers been found scattered in the area? His phone was recovered later by a member of the public in a park. His rucksack and laptop were stolen the same day — a man was later jailed for pawning them. CCTV gaps plagued the investigation. Some footage wasn’t even reviewed until 2022. Storm drains in the area — how accessible were they? Why had the police response seemed so limited at first?

Fiona Donohoe never accepted the simple narrative. She became a tireless campaigner, attending every hearing, pushing for answers. “I feel not just a duty to him, but also to all other families who may find themselves in this position,” she told the inquest in heart-wrenching testimony. She was “tormented” that Noah’s legacy could be “tainted” by rumour and suspicion. “Had she known how ‘limited’ their time was together,” she said of those final days, “she would never have left her son.”

The inquest, which finally opened in January 2026 with a jury after years of delays, has been a rollercoaster of emotion. Fiona sits alone at the back each day, a solitary figure in black, her grief raw and unrelenting.

Then came the bombshell week in early February.

First, Gemma McMullan’s testimony on February 2 sent ripples through the court. That high-pitched scream at midnight — “Totally out of the blue.” She assumed it was “either a young person or a female”. The direction? Straight towards the wasteland where Noah’s body lay days later. She checked the window. Nothing. But the scream stayed with her.

By February 4, Tanya and Grant Brown’s evidence turned the inquest explosive. Two screams. Human. Undeniable. “No doubt,” Tanya insisted. The couple stood in their garden listening, hearts pounding. Grant heard the muffled cry like “a girl’s scream”. Then the torchlight flash at 3am — the same time another neighbour reported someone trying her back door.

The jury leaned forward. Fiona’s barrister hammered home the point: these weren’t animal noises. These were cries that could — just could — have been a terrified 14-year-old boy fighting the current in that storm drain.

But then came the clashes with police accounts — the very contradictions that have fuelled Fiona’s fight for years.

Constable David Budden, the single point of contact with Fiona the day after Noah vanished, gave evidence that raised eyebrows. In his later statement to the coroner — made seven months after the death and, crucially, requested “out of the blue” by a senior officer — he recalled Fiona describing Noah as “very weepy”. She had apparently asked the school for counselling. And she had mentioned the Jordan Peterson book, worried about its influence on her son.

None of this appeared in contemporaneous police notes or logs from those frantic first days. Fiona’s own evidence painted a different picture: a loving mum sharing everything she could to help find her boy. In her 999 call and initial statements, desperation shone through — not suspicion about a self-help book. “Positions can be amplified in desperate situations,” Budden conceded under questioning.

Another officer’s 2021 statement to the coroner showed “materially different” accounts to Fiona’s version of events. Barrister Brenda Campbell KC put it bluntly: the details about Noah’s mood and the book had become “a feature” of the investigation. The officer insisted it was his honest recollection from conversations with Fiona. But the timing — five years later — and the lack of early records raised uncomfortable questions in court.

Fiona sat listening, her face a mask of controlled pain. Police had focused on her son’s “strange” behaviour at home, one officer noted elsewhere in the inquest. Priorities elsewhere, it seemed. Meanwhile, vital CCTV sat unwatched for years. The storm drain where Noah died — was it properly searched initially?

One detective constable described texting Noah’s phone during the search to reassure him he wasn’t in trouble — a heartbreaking detail that underscored how desperately everyone hoped he was just hiding somewhere. When the phone was recovered, it rang with a call from “Mum”. The officer answered to break the news gently.

Other witnesses painted a picture of chaos that night. Heather Scott found a blue hoodie and trainers in Northwood Road — moved them, only realising later they matched Noah’s description. Chris Morrow spotted a black bike on its side and a helmet. Lauren Morrow saw the same. Items scattered like clues in a nightmare.

Pathologists agreed: death by drowning. Body covered in silt and mud. Bruises consistent with the drain’s harsh journey. “No indication of assault,” they stressed. Yet the screams, the flashes, the door handle rattling — they linger like unanswered ghosts.

As the inquest continues into its third week and beyond, the jury must weigh it all. Was Noah’s death a tragic accident — a boy swept into a drain after perhaps cycling too close in the dark? Or did those midnight screams tell a darker story? Did a thoughtful, bookish teenager — obsessed with rules for life — cry out in his final moments while police accounts painted him as “weepy” and the book as suspicious?

Fiona Donohoe fights on. Every day in court. Every night reliving the horror. “I’m tormented,” she has said, “that his legacy could be tainted by rumour and suspicion.” She bought her son that self-help book hoping it would guide him. Now, in the cold light of the inquest, it has become a battleground.

The neighbours’ testimonies have left the courtroom reeling. Two women, ordinary mums in north Belfast, describing screams they knew weren’t foxes. “No doubts, no.” High-pitched. Human. Desperate.

Were those Noah’s last cries? Did he pedal into the night, book in his bag, only to face terror in a storm drain while the city slept?

The inquest must decide. But for Fiona, the fight never ends. Her boy deserved better. Belfast — and a grieving mother — demand the truth.