The first police constable called to the puzzling discovery of a car submerged in a canal in Kingston, Ontario with four bodies inside immediately suspected it was not an accident. Brent White, the second witness at the murder trial of a Montreal businessman, his wife and son, testified that he believed the car had been deliberately put there. “It’s in the locks where it’s obviously going to be found,” White testified Friday. He did not know what the car contained when he began investigating on the morning of June 30, 2009.
In the days after Mohammad Shafia’s three daughters died, he spoke privately to family about how they had dishonoured him by consorting with boys, jurors at his murder trial were told Thursday, October 20. “God’s curse on them … may the devil shit on their graves,” Shafia (inset) said, in a conversation with his second wife Tooba and son Hamed that was secretly recorded by police. “Is that what a daughter should be? Would [a daughter] be such a whore?”
The judge presiding at the canal mass murder trial in Kingston, Ontario, has changed his mind about the use of electronic devices in the courtroom, as the trial proper is about to begin. In a short session today, Mr. Justice Robert Maranger announced that he was reversing the decision he made Tuesday. On Tuesday, Maranger said he would permit journalists to send email from the courtroom, though he banned live Tweeting from the courtroom. But today, Maranger said he’s now decided that sending email from the courtroom also will be prohibited.
Lawyers poked and prodded 81 Kingston-area citizens today until they found two more considered acceptable to sit in judgment of a Montreal man, his wife and adult son who are accused of killing four family members. Ten jurors have now been selected for the first ever mass murder trial in Kingston. It’s likely that the process will be completed Thursday – far sooner than first expected – when the lawyers pick two more regular jurors and two alternates. Five men and five women have been chosen for the jury. They’ll decide if Mohammad Shafia, 58, his wife Tooba, 41, and their son Hamed, 20,(inset) are guilty of murdering four family members. The four were found dead on June 30, 2009, inside a small car that was discovered submerged in a shallow canal in Kingston. Despite the speedy trial selection – seven days had been set aside to pick jurors – the judge repeated today that the trial proper is expected to begin October 20. That’s the date when witnesses will begin appearing and evidence will be called. Prosecutors say they may call 57 witnesses.
A Montreal man, his wife and 20-year-old son accused of killing four family members made their first official, public denials in a Kingston, Ontario courtroom Tuesday, as their murder trial opened. Mohammad Shafia, 58, his wife Tooba, 41,(inset) and their son Hamed, 20, stood in the courtroom as a registrar read aloud the charges against them: That they did, together, murder Rona Amir Mohammad, 52, and Shafia sisters Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13, on or about June 30, 2009. Shafia and his familial co-accused replied clearly, “Not guilty,” as each of the four charges was read, though Shafia stammered once, and responded, in English and his native Dari: “No, boo-die?” when he was asked how he pleaded to the charge of murdering Zainab Shafia, his eldest daughter. Shafia quickly corrected his utterance – ”No, what for?” – and offered an awkward English correction, ”No guilty.”
More than 1,000 people from the Kingston, Ontario area have been summoned to a local courthouse as the area’s most complex murder case opens. A 12-member jury and alternates will be selected for the trial of three Montrealers who are accused of killing four family members. Three teenage sisters and a 52-year-old woman were found dead in a car that was discovered submerged in the Rideau Canal at Kingston Mills on June 30, 2009.
