Sep 17, 2026 · 28 min · 9 segments
Could Noah Donohoe have been found alive if the storm-drain search had progressed differently? In Episode 3 of Noah Donohoe: The Search for Truth, Donal MacIntyre and Jason Payne-James examine the…
Donal MacIntyreHost
Jason Payne-JamesHost
Well, while the police and the community rescue service, a volunteer service, were looking for Noah, Sean McCary, who's the head of that, walked around the back of the houses, pretty close to where Noah was last seen, and spotted this storm drain, this structure, which is part metal, part concrete.
And in fact, what he said was, you know, if Noah was naked, which he was at that time, he might have gone a bit embarrassed and it'd be a good place to hide.
During that search, initial search in the morning, we identified a grill and an entry point into a drainage system, passed that through to police.
The police officer came and looked at it and we all agreed, including himself, obviously, the police officer agreed that that was an area of interest because in the absence of anyone else, you know, there was a place someone could have got into.
Well, let's go down the drain and to the location where Noah was believed by the police to have crawled along and eventually to have drowned sometime between Monday morning, the 22nd of June and Saturday, the 27th of June when he was found.
you came to the storm drain, part of it, lifted a manhole and you were with us as we explored it.
I didn't understand it until I'd seen it in person, is what we refer to as a culvert.
It's really quite terrifying, or it is to somebody like me, it gets a bit claustrophobic, but you have... a 1.234-meter diameter concrete tube that's extending at a slight angle down underneath Belfast.
The first thing I think that I felt was, well, how on earth would somebody get from one end to the other end, even with support and proper gear?
You wonder, how could Noah have known about this? The access point was here and...
Well, while the police and the community rescue service, a volunteer service, were looking for Noah, Sean McCary, who's the head of that, walked around the back of the houses, pretty close to where Noah was last seen, and spotted this storm drain, this structure, which is part metal, part concrete.
And in fact, what he said was, you know, if Noah was naked, which he was at that time, he might have gone a bit embarrassed and it'd be a good place to hide.
During that search, initial search in the morning, we identified a grill and an entry point into a drainage system, passed that through to police.
The police officer came and looked at it and we all agreed, including himself, obviously, the police officer agreed that that was an area of interest because in the absence of anyone else, you know, there was a place someone could have got into.
Well, let's go down the drain and to the location where Noah was believed by the police to have crawled along and eventually to have drowned sometime between Monday morning, the 22nd of June and Saturday, the 27th of June when he was found.
you came to the storm drain, part of it, lifted a manhole and you were with us as we explored it.
I didn't understand it until I'd seen it in person, is what we refer to as a culvert.
It's really quite terrifying, or it is to somebody like me, it gets a bit claustrophobic, but you have... a 1.234-meter diameter concrete tube that's extending at a slight angle down underneath Belfast.
The first thing I think that I felt was, well, how on earth would somebody get from one end to the other end, even with support and proper gear?
You wonder, how could Noah have known about this? The access point was here and...
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.
