Court shown images of Noah walking streets barefoot

Images of a mysterious trip by Noah Donohoe in the early hours of the day of his disappearance have been shown to a jury at the schoolboy's inquest.

Noah went missing at around 18:00 GMT on 21 June 2020 after cycling from his home in south Belfast to the north of the city.

At an inquest into his death on Wednesday, the coroner Mr Justice Rooney and the jury were shown CCTV footage which recorded Noah leaving his home at 03:34 GMT on the morning of 21 June and returning more than half an hour later at 04:08 GMT.

Additional footage was played to the inquest which showed Noah walking along University Street and Dudley Street while he was away from his home during that period.

In the footage of Noah leaving his home that morning he was wearing shorts, a white t-shirt and flip-flops and he was carrying headphones in one of his hands.

When he returned, Noah was no longer wearing flip-flops and he walked back into his apartment in his bare feet.

The additional footage of the teenage boy, along nearby Dudley Street and University Street, also revealed that he was walking along the streets in his bare feet.

The inquest examined the footage in detail, outlining how the teenage boy walked off in the direction of the Queen's University area but returned from the opposite Ormeau Road direction.

The mystery about the 34-minute early morning trip away from his home featured at the inquest on Wednesday during evidence from Jake Blythe, a forensic video analyst.

He examined CCTV footage from the area relating to different times on the day of Noah's disappearance.

The witness described footage he examined as "a complete chain of evidence".

The inquest also looked in detail at images of Noah when he returned home after 04:00 GMT that morning, and examined the shorts he was wearing, exploring the possibility that there may have been an item in one of his pockets.

A barrister for Noah's family described it as "not protruding, something that fits".

It was also noted that a belt Noah was wearing at the time was hanging loose when he returned to the apartment he shared with his mother.

The coroner Mr Justice Rooney observed that it was "more dislodged" than when Noah left the apartment just over half an hour earlier.

During his evidence, Jake Blythe also told the inquest that he inspected images of Noah cycling past Ulster University in north Belfast on his final bicycle ride before he went missing.

The witness said he was satisfied that Noah had a rucksack on his back as he cycled along a walkway at a construction site at the university.

He said there was "limited support" to suggest that he may still have been wearing the bag while he cycled across a junction at the end of the university site.

However, he said any evidence about Noah still being in possession of his rucksack beyond that point was "inconclusive".

A man who was jailed for stealing Noah's laptop, which was inside his rucksack, told the inquest previously that he found it alongside the university walkway.

The inquest also heard from a former manager of a funeral directors on the York Road in north Belfast, along the route of Noah's final bicycle ride.

Roberta Boyd worked at Melville Morgan at the time of Noah's disappearance.

She recalled a visit to their office by the PSNI during the search for Noah.

The witness said they asked for CCTV footage, and she assumed it was in connection with the investigation into the boy's disappearance.

She said she granted them access to the CCTV, and they downloaded the material.

A lawyer for the PSNI explained to Boyd that the police have no record of downloading material from the Melville Morgan CCTV footage that day.

The witness was asked if she may have mistaken the time with a previous occasion when the police called and downloaded footage about an unrelated case earlier that month.

Boyd said she wasn't "watching exactly what they were doing" because her knowledge of such technology is limited.

The witness said she let them use the material themselves and that as far as she knew they downloaded the material.

She said she remembers the police coming to the office that day because people were out searching on the York Road.

She said they came from many parts of Belfast including the nearby New Lodge and Mount Vernon.

Commenting about the death of Noah, she said: "It's tragic, tragic".