The account that now exists of Noah Woods’ last movements did not come from rumour. It came from Detective Chief Inspector Matt Connick of Suffolk Police, speaking at Suffolk Coroner’s Court in Ipswich on Friday, 25 September 2026, when ᴀssistant coroner Jyoti Gill opened and adjourned the inquest. Gill called it a very sad and tragic death, and told the court she wanted to express her deepest condolences to Noah’s family and friends and to everyone affected. Connick’s evidence then replaced the blurred map of the search with a route. CCTV had shown Noah in the play area with a relative, as part of an ordinary Tuesday. He left the play area through a gap in the fence, into a memorial garden, and left that garden through an open gate. He ran down a path on a new housing estate in the direction of Decoy Pond. The relative followed closely, trying to keep up, and shouted after him. After about 200 metres, Noah could not be seen. Police were called. A large-scale search began.

The recovery, as set out in court, was precise in a way the public updates of that Wednesday had not been. Metropolitan Police divers found him in Decoy Pond on 16 September, about five metres from the bank, within submerged tree roots, at a point where the depth was estimated at 1.8 metres. Paramedics confirmed death at 4:31pm. That evening, at Ipswich Hospital, his mother, Charlie Peck, formally confirmed his idenтιтy. A post-mortem examination was carried out at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge. Connick told the court that the medical cause of death was pending further investigation. A date for the full inquest has not been set. Police have said throughout that the death is not being treated as suspicious. The coronial file is not finished. Those two facts can sit together without contradiction, and they matter, because an unfinished medical investigation is not the same thing as a mystery novel. What the court has established is a route, a distance, a place in the water, a time of confirmation and an identification. What it has not established is why a little boy who left a fenced play area in the middle of a routine afternoon was ᴅᴇᴀᴅ in that pond the next day.

The fencing detail is the one people in Brantham are likely to keep returning to, and it should be reported carefully. The play area and the memorial garden were enclosed by perimeter fencing. There was a break in the internal fencing between the play area and the garden, and the gate beyond it was open. None of that, on the evidence heard at the opening, was presented as a criminal failing or as a finding of blame. The relative’s account, given to police and summarised in court, is of a normal visit, a child who ran, a chase, a shout, and a loss of sight at 200 metres.

The search that followed was one of the largest voluntary turnouts Suffolk has seen for a missing child, and it did not change where he was found. Five metres from the edge is close enough that a person standing on the bank could almost imagine reaching it, and far enough, among roots, at nearly two metres down, that only a diver was going to reach it. Gill adjourned the hearing with the cause still open. Until that further investigation is complete, the honest public record stops at the route, the recovery and the family’s description of the boy who ran. Anything beyond that is guesswork, and guesswork is not what the court was convened to hear.