Maria Nolan testified at the inquest into Noah Donohoe's death that a prior claim of him being injected with heroin or naloxone lacked factual basis and stemmed from rumour. The Belfast Coroner's Court hearing, now in its 12th week before a jury, examined her past statements and police interviews read by counsel Peter Coll KC.

Noah Donohoe, 14, a St Malachy's College pupil, left home by bike on June 18, 2020, to meet friends near Cavehill in north Belfast. His naked body appeared six days later in a storm drain tunnel there. Post-mortem results listed drowning as the cause. Prior evidence noted no toxicological signs of drugs, though full certainty remained impossible.

Nolan received Noah's missing laptop from Daryl Paul on June 24, 2020, to sell at Cash Converters for drug funds. She went with him but thought it was his. The store refused it absent a charger and notified police. Officers retrieved it from her room at Queen's Quarter Housing on University Street, opposite the Donohoe home.

Both Nolan and Paul received convictions for handling the stolen laptop. Nolan called Paul a friend, not a partner. Paul stayed often outside the housing. She spotted a green coat like Noah's in his home then but knew nothing of Noah or his disappearance.

In a statement after talks with the Donohoe family's lawyers, Nolan referenced addict talk of an injection during Noah's city centre travel and robberies on vulnerable people. She later said she did not write it, signed under pressure to aid the family, and held no such knowledge. Police took the laptop one or two nights after she got it without naming Noah or his case.

Nolan first heard the rumour in August 2020 during an assault when asked if she did it. She denied meeting Noah, seeing any attack on him, or hearing confessions. Drug use then impaired her memory. She rejected claims of prior contact with him.