Skip to main content
murder case

Tooba Mohammad Yahya and husband Mohammad Shafia and their son Hamed Mohammed Shafia are escorted by police officers into the Frontenac County Court courthouse on the first day of trial in Kingston, Ontario on Thursday, October 20, 2011.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press

Ontario jurors saw for themselves Tuesday how the bodies of three teenage sisters and another family member looked suspended in water in a car at the bottom of a canal.

But the girls' mother, one of the people accused of killing them, asked to leave the courtroom so she didn't have to see the eerie video shot by a police diver.

Sisters, Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and 13-year-old Geeti Shafia, were discovered with their polygamist father's first wife, Rona Amir Mohammad, 50, in a car on June 30, 2009 in the Rideau Canal in Kingston, Ont.

The girls' mother, Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 41, their father, Mohammad Shafia, 58, and their older brother, Hamed Mohammad Shafia, 20, have each pleaded not guilty to four counts of first-degree murder.

The Crown alleges the Montreal family thought their daughters betrayed them by having boyfriends, so they killed them to protect their honour and staged the scene to look like an accident.

The 14-minute underwater video shot by provincial police Constable Glenn Newell was uneventful for the first 10 minutes, but when he panned up past the door panel, a pair of legs could be seen in the first of a series of grisly discoveries.

The jury could then see the head of one of the victims, facing down and with hair obscuring her face. Blankets, a purse, yellow bag, a torso and a hand of a victim are seen in the passenger side window on the driver's side.

No one was sitting in the driver's seat.

In the backseat were Rona Amir Mohammad and Sahar, who court has heard was "given" to Ms. Mohammad by Ms. Yahya to raise as her own, because Ms. Mohammad couldn't have children. The two were especially close, court has heard. Their bodies were found sitting side by side, their heads touching.

Constable Newell testified Monday he found it strange the two bodies in the front weren't in a seated position, rather piled on one another close to the driver's side. Constable Newell said he was "perplexed" that he couldn't identify the driver.

But Mohammad Shafia's defence lawyer Peter Kemp asked Tuesday if was it possible the young women may have been frantic and going for the last bit of air in the car that would go to the highest point of the car as it sunk.

Constable Newell agreed it was possible and said he was no expert in determining how the car would have sunk in the water or how long it would've taken.

Patrick McCann, representing Hamed Shafia, suggested to Constable Newell the bodies may have been closer to the driver's side because the women had tried to get out. Constable Newell agreed it was possible, despite testifying previously it didn't appear they had tried to escape the submerged car, even though the window was down.

Constable Newell also agreed the more people in the car, the harder it is to get out.

The cause of death for all four victims was drowning, but it isn't possible to say for certain that they drowned in the canal where they were found, the Crown has said. Three of them had bruising on the crowns of their heads.

The Crown theory of the car's path is that it would have had to travel past a locked gate, over a concrete curb and a rocky outcrop and then make two U-turns to end up in the locks of the canal.

The family had been on their way home from a trip to Niagara Falls, Ont., at the time of the crash.

A Kingston motel manager testified Tuesday that when Shafia and Hamed checked in to two rooms for the family that night, at first Shafia said there would be six guests. There were 10 people on the family trip.

An expert will be called later to testify about so-called honour killings and how in extreme cases, killing can be seen in some cultures as a way to restore honour to a family. Disobedience by a female member of the family can cause shame and taint family honour, the expert is expected testify.

The family immigrated to Canada in 2007. They left their home country of Afghanistan in 1992 and lived for a number of years in Pakistan, Australia and Dubai before coming to North America.

The trial is expected to last up to 10 weeks.

Interact with The Globe