Investigating a culvert in which Noah Donohoe’s body was found after he went missing was “not a priority” during the first few days of the search for him, a police constable has told an inquest in Belfast.Noah, a pupil at St Malachy’s College, was 14 when his naked body was found in an underground water tunnel in north Belfast on June 27th, 2020, six days after he left home on his bike to meet two friends in the Cavehill area of the city.He was found more than 600m downstream from where he had last been seen, close to a culvert inlet behind houses at Northwood Road.A postmortem examination found the cause of his death was drowning.The inquest into his death at Belfast Coroner’s Court, which is being heard with a jury, is now in its 17th week.Questioned on Tuesday by Brenda Campbell, counsel for Noah’s mother Fiona Donohoe, Constable George from the Police Service of Northern Ireland said searching the culvert in the first two days after Noah was reported missing was “not a priority”.George, who was police search adviser at the time, told the inquest he arrived at Northwood Linear Park, near where the culvert is located, at about 11pm on June 22nd, the day after the teenager was reported missing.He said he walked around the park and then to the park’s gates, from which he could overlook the culvert, but did not go to the tunnel to take a closer look.Asked by Campbell if he had thought it was worth going to the culvert then, George said: “At that point no, because I wasn’t prioritising this area as part of my search.”Asked if he could see, from where he was standing at the gates, how “attractive” the culvert may have been for a child, and how “feasible” it may have been to get to the culvert, George replied: “No.”Campbell said George had a conversation with Community Rescue Service regional commander Sean McCarry, during which the latter said the culvert should be searched.Asked again why he did not go to the culvert, with this conversation in mind, George said: “Because I was prioritising other areas in that significant searching area. I was prioritising other areas.”Campbell told the inquest it took McCarry five minutes to assess the culvert and deem it a potential “hiding place”.She told George, who has search experience in caves and dangerous environments, that it was inexcusable he did not take a look at the culvert.George said the culvert “didn’t seem in any way like an attractive place for one to go and seek shelter”.“And there were a lot of dwellings and other places that seemed much more so,” he added.George told the court he first went to see the culvert the following day, on June 23rd, and then again on June 24th.He said the tide was coming in on June 23rd and he could then see the culvert start filling up, and confirmed it was “obvious” the risk of drowning in such conditions was “very high”.Asked by Campbell why he did not ask for divers to take a look at the culvert then, he said: “Because I had no reason to believe that anyone could be in there.”Asked why he went to take a look at it, he added: “Because it needed to be searched to make sure there wasn’t anyone in there.”Later, he said he was told to prioritise searches in places missing people were likely to be found, as part of his search and rescue training, adding that the area around Northwood Linear Park “had a great many sheds, derelict buildings, unoccupied houses, derelict houses, places where people could take shelter and conceal themselves”.George also told the inquest he had to bear in mind the safety of his team, as the searches were being conducted in “many dangerous areas”.The inquest continues. – PA