A police officer shown CCTV of missing Belfast teenager Noah Donohoe cycling naked just before his disappearance did not check for other cameras in the vicinity, an inquest has heard.
The officer was giving evidence in the fourth week of proceedings.
The officer told the court he and a colleague had viewed the footage on a phone belonging to a resident in the street.
It was linked to a CCTV camera on the homeowner's property at Northwood Road in north Belfast.
The officer said it showed Noah Donohoe cycling past the house, dropping his bicycle and leaving. He was naked.
It was presumed that he had headed towards a wooded area at the rear of the houses - though the footage did not clearly show that.
The footage was dated around 6pm on the previous evening, 21 June 2020.
It was the final sighting of the 14-year-old.
Police had already been told that a young black teenager had been seen cycling naked in the street around teatime that day.
The officer told the inquest that despite being shown the CCTV footage he did not check the position of the camera, nor did he check whether there were additional cameras.
He said he had not looked up, and the homeowner had not volunteered the existence of other cameras.
He told the inquest that he was unaware that there was a second camera on the gable of the property which pointed in the direction of the wooded area.
The inquest heard the interaction with the resident took place around 10.30pm on the night of Monday 22 June - the night after Noah was seen in the area.
The teenager’s body was found six days later hundreds of metres into a storm drain, the entrance of which was in the wooded area at the rear of the houses at Northwood Road.
Brenda Campbell KC, counsel for Noah’s mother Fiona Donohoe, raised an issue about the lack of information in the officer’s pocketbook.
It contained only a reference to the start and the end of his 12-hour shift that night.
The officer said information would have been inputted to a digital police log.
But Ms Campbell said not all relevant information had been included in that digital log, including that the officer had returned to the area in the early hours to check sheds and coal bunkers.
A second officer also gave evidence about the CCTV presented by the resident.
He said he had not been able to seize it because the man was not sure how to download it.
The resident told the officer the timing on the CCTV was out by 3 minutes.
But he confirmed to the inquest that he had not double checked the timing because that would only be done at the point at which the footage was formally seized by police.
The inquest also heard that a police record showed that the investigating officer assigned to Noah Donohoe’s case had changed 7 times in the first three days of his disappearance.
A PSNI protocol states that an officer at the rank of inspector should be in charge of an investigation into any high-risk missing person.
The record showed that the investigating officer changed during each 12-hour shift during that period before the CID took over responsibility for the case.
In response to questions by Donal Lunny KC for the PSNI, an officer agreed that having such a regular change of investigating officers was normal policing practice in such cases.
The inquest continues.
