Honour on Trial Page 10

  Mehdizadeh wanted to know how the vehicles got there. "Who, who brought the car, the Nissan, from where you were waiting for them when Shafia and Hamed came? Who brought this car to the place where it fell into the water? Who was driving? Were you driving or Shafia?" he demanded.

  "Shafia," Tooba replied.

  "Or Hamed?"

  "Shafia was driving."

  Then came this almost inconceivable recount by Tooba of her daughters' last moments: "I, I just, just saw that, when the noise came from the water, since Hamed and I was a bit far away. Hamed was walking around and we were chatting … When the noise of the water came, I, when the noise of the water came, we ran. We ran and came [to the water]. We came. At that moment I became so stressed, as I didn't understand where the Lexus was or where this car was …"

  Mehdizadeh asked: "What were the girls doing when the car went into the water?"

  "Nothing," she replied. "I, believe me, I fell down. I screamed and fell down … I screamed and fell down so I didn't understand that this car — where the Lexus went — what happened to this car? Just when I realized [the Nissan] went into the water, I screamed and fell down. I screamed and fell down so … I became unconscious.

  "Hamed and I ran. We ran and we saw that the car was in the water. After that, I don't remember. Believe in God that I didn't understand anything. I grab my hair and fell down, fell down, then I didn't understand."

  Then: "When I got to the motel, I was still not thinking that the girls had fallen into the water. I thought that their dad had already taken them. I was thinking like this. Do you understand?"

  "No," said Mehdizadeh, "It's impossible because you knew that the girls were in the car."

  "They were in the car," she agreed, "but I was thinking this: Why [didn't] these girls come down after me because they were always coming after me. Wherever I was going, they were following me. I was thinking like the car had been fallen empty."

  Tooba said Shafia drove to the Kingston East Motel and Hamed helped her into the room. But Mehdizadeh went back to the scene at Kingston Mills.

  "You saw Shafia was driving and hit at the back of this car with the Lexus and pushed it into the water?" he asked.

  "I didn't see it [with] my eyes," said Tooba."Didn't see it with my eyes — just I am telling [you] that I didn't see the Lexus with my eyes pushing the other. Believe me, I didn't see this with my eyes."

  After she screamed and fell down, Mehdizadeh wanted to know, did Hamed try to help his sisters? "Hamed went into the water to save them?" he asked.

  "Into the water, no. He couldn't go into the water."

  "Why?" Mehdizadeh asked.

  "He couldn't go [because] we ran and I fell down."

  "Nobody called the police?"

  "To the police?" said Tooba. "I don't know anything after that. I don't know anything."

  Mehdizadeh pointed out how perplexing the family's actions were from that point on. Hamed drove to Montreal, ostensibly for business or to get the laptop and didn't report the incident from that night. The rest of them went to bed at the Kingston East Motel and didn't call police.

  "Shafia was there. You say that Shafia has done this. Okay, obviously Shafia didn't want to call the police," said Mehdizadeh. "What else [did] he want to do, because you said Shafia was behind the wheel of the Lexus. Their mother is there. Their brother is there. A brother who, when the Lexus hits a pole in Montreal the next day, immediately calls the police because of the accident. Nobody called the police here."

  Tooba's response was to defend Hamed. "Maybe he didn't have his cellphone," she offered.

  "No, it was with him," said Mehdizadeh. He pulled out all the stops, taking Tooba's hands in his, begging for the truth so the victims could rest peacefully in their graves. Later, in the courtroom, Mohammad and Tooba both broke down crying. On the video screen, Tooba began to backtrack from her statements. Mehdizadeh again wanted to know what the women were doing as the car went over the edge.

  "How do I know that?" she replied with one of the most chilling remarks of the entire trial. "In the darkness, it was as dark as the grave over there."

  Realizing she had told too much, Tooba's story started to change. When she and Hamed heard the car go into the water, she thought Shafia had moved the children from the Nissan to the Lexus. But why, Mehdizadeh asked, would Shafia plunge the Nissan into the water?

  "I didn't know whether the children were [in it] or not," she said. "I didn't know anything. I became unconscious."

  Mehdizadeh clenched his fists in front of him and asked Tooba: "Do you see that their hands are like this? Do you know why they became like this? Because they have been drowned, Madam. You are trying to tell me that no one, none of them, wanted to come out of the car?"

  They argued over why neither she nor Hamed called the police. Tooba said it was because she was unconscious. Why not Hamed, then? "Maybe he also became unconscious," said Tooba.

  Mehdizadeh continued to press her to tell him why she helped kill her daughters.

  "I didn't have any reason and didn't help [with] this. In fact, I didn't help Shafia in killing them, believe me," she said calmly. Now, several hours into the investigation, Tooba decided to push back. "You said I helped," she said. "Do you have any evidence that I have helped them?"

  Mehdizadeh showed her a photo of Geeti drowned in the car. Her hand, he said, was pointing toward Sahar's in the back seat, as if she were reaching out to the sister she loved so much. "At least have a little respect for your daughters. Their graves are still cold. Their graves haven't even warmed up yet," he said.

  Instead of breaking down under the continued pressure from Mehdizadeh, Tooba got more confident. She wanted Mehdizadeh to say why he thought the girls didn't try to escape from the car. "Tell me your thoughts why these girls [didn't] come out," she said, insisting that she didn't know herself. "If they were unconscious — all those medical examinations have been completed … The medical test has been conducted, right? So why hasn't it shown [anywhere] that they had been unconscious?"

  Mehdizadeh said the autopsy wasn't completed. Then he cut to the chase. "Have you killed them," he asked.

  "No."

  "Shafia has killed them?"

  "No, I don't know."

  "Nobody?"

  "I don't know what has happened. What has happened, I don't know myself, don't know," said Tooba. "Somebody else has killed them."

  The next day, she informed police that she was recanting everything she'd told Mehdizadeh during the interrogation.

  Hamed…

  Hamed Shafia, the second child and first son of Mohammad Shafia and Tooba Mohammad Yahya, appears sullen and angry in photographs and on the videotape. He is a good-looking young man but not handsome, bearing a strong resemblance to his mother. He is quiet, his emotions seemingly held in check, and speaks in an understated monotone when questioned. Like his mother, he frequently contradicts himself, compounding one lie with another.

  Hamed was interviewed twice on June 30, 2009, by Detective Geoff Dempster at the Kingston Police station. In the afternoon interview, Dempster asked Hamed why he left for Montreal in the middle of the night.

  "I needed something personal," Hamed answered vaguely. Later he told Dempster it was to retrieve his laptop which he had forgotten in Montreal, and had been without for a week. "There was a million reasons why I went there," he finally said.

  He also slipped in information several times about Zainab and his sisters wanting to drive the car as a possible reason for their going on a joyride in the middle of the night. He recalled being "scared" watching Zainab drive in a parking lot. Even 13-year-old Geeti tried to drive, Hamed told Dempster. He admitted, however, that Rona's presence in the car didn't make sense.

  "She was a person who really thought twice about doing things."

  Dempster also wanted to know why Hamed went to Montreal in the Lexus but returned in the Montana minivan.

  "That was my choice. I just thought I'd bring it," he explained.


  Dempster told Hamed that someone at the locks overnight heard a splash and that someone else saw a vehicle drive away from the scene.

  "You mean someone pushed them in?" Hamed asked.

  "No, that there was someone there," said Dempster.

  Kingston Police then learned from Montreal police that Hamed had reported an accident that morning with the Lexus SUV in a supermarket parking lot. They decided to bring him in for another interview at 8:40 pm. Dempster asked him why he was hiding information. Why didn't he tell him about the accident earlier in the day?

  "It was nothing related to this," Hamed said, referring to his sisters' deaths.

  Dempster wanted to know why the women would have gone joyriding in the Nissan at such a late hour.

  "I think they wanted to take it for a test drive," he replied.

  Dempster was persistent. "It's weird," he told Hamed. "No one here can make any sense of it."

  Hamed said he was in the motel room when Zainab asked for the keys to the Nissan. He then left for Montreal. The girls also left. He didn't know how they got from the motel to the bottom of the Rideau Canal.

  "I have nothing to put on the table," Hamed told the officer.

  At 11:25 pm on July 22, about 12 hours after being arrested in Montreal, Hamed was brought to an interrogation at the Kingston Police station to meet with Detective Steve Koopman. Koopman's assignment, early in the case, had been to befriend and develop a rapport with the family. He had been the one to escort the grieving parents to the morgue to identify the bodies. He also attended the funeral in Montreal on July 5 — by which time police had concluded that the Lexus SUV had been used to push the Nissan into the canal.

  Koopman zeroed in on the early morning of June 30 when the Shafias exited at Kingston to find a motel for the night. He established once again that Hamed and his father drove away in the Lexus to find a place and that they had three of his younger siblings with them.

  Koopman: "Did they park on the side of a road? Did they park in a parking lot? Were they …"

  Hamed: "It was, it was in a parking lot, I think. Yeah." He told Koopman that after he and his father checked into the Kingston East, they went back up the road to find his mother and sisters and Rona. But the Nissan was already driving toward them. Hamed couldn't explain how this happened.

  Hamed said he was only at the motel five or ten minutes when he decided to leave for Montreal. Mainly he wanted to check on a "building" they owned in the city.

  "So how long were you in Montreal before the Lexus hit the rail?" Koopman asked.

  "I went home, then, uh, when I had to eat something, I went and got up," he replied. "So if it was five … If I got there at, like, six or five, maybe. Three hours, yeah, five-thirty, six. Then about two hours, I guess."

  "OK," said Koopman, "So why wouldn't you have taken the Nissan back to Montreal?"

  We don't hear Hamed's response because of a technical problem with the videotaping. Hamed was again asked about the accident with the Lexus in the Montreal supermarket parking lot. Koopman wanted to know how the pieces of Lexus headlight ended up inside the vehicle. Hamed said the Montreal police officer told him to collect them.

  It was a meandering interview with Hamed always suggesting Koopman check the cellphone records to more accurately gauge where he was at different times.

  "I guess in terms of where we are tonight and why you're sitting here, I just gotta ask, should I believe everything that you've told me tonight?" Koopman said.

  "Yeah," Hamed replied. "If it wasn't the truth, I wouldn't tell you, but then if, uh, if you're saying, uh, if you're asking me, like, uh, asking me if you believe me or not, then, you know, it's up to you."

  Koopman offered Hamed a chance to tell him anything else he might remember from the night and following morning of June 29-30. Hamed suggested that if Koopman were to give him more of the evidence against them that he could then "correct your mistake."

  Koopman excused himself from the room then returned a short while later. He had been conferring with other officers watching the interview. He told Hamed that they had just given him new information and that he was not asking Hamed any longer if he and his parents killed the women — he wanted to know why they did it. Hamed didn't answer. Koopman asked Hamed if his father exerted control over him to help with the murders.

  "It's not a question of did it happen, Hamed," said Koopman. "It's a question of why did it go that far?"

  Hamed asked for more proof of their guilt. Koopman listed off all the lies he'd caught him in, such as supposedly having stayed in Niagara Falls all five days even though his cell phone registered off a tower near Kingston on June 27. Then he went over the fact that pieces of plastic from the Lexus headlight were found at the lockstation.

  "I know," Hamed replied. "I understand that and I know … How are you involving the other two with me?… My question to you is how come my, uh, parents got into this?" Hamed told Koopman that his mother had "nothing to do with it 'cause she was not herself that night. She was really tired. She had no idea where we are and everything."

  Koopman told him that she had just told police she heard the splash, "and she's admitting to us that she's seen the car in the water."

  "I don't know," Hamed responded. "I don't know about that." He asked Koopman if he could meet with his mother. The officer said no. Hamed said he was perplexed that police could assume all three were involved in a murder if there was no video footage to prove it.

  Koopman cut to the chase, telling him to forget about all the other details and tell him why pieces of the Lexus headlight were found at Kingston Mills.

  "I don't know," Hamed answered.

  "You do know that," said Koopman. "That's an absolutely horrible answer to give to me." He accused Hamed of staging the accident in Montreal to cover up the damage from using the Lexus to bump the Nissan into the locks. He told Hamed that the pieces of plastic were recovered the morning the car was discovered underwater.

  Hamed again wanted to know when they were collected.

  "What does it matter?" Koopman asked him. Hamed said members of Hussain Hyderi's family had visited Kingston and could have dropped the pieces in the grass. Koopman said again the pieces were collected the morning of June 30 by police when the area was sealed off from the public.

  "That piece of [the] Lexus was there because you were there with that vehicle," Koopman said.

  Hamed sputtered, saying he had no hope in his life and that "now it's your turn to answer my question."

  Koopman corrected him. "You're not in a position to start demanding answers from me," he said. Then he told Hamed how disappointed he was in him.

  "Listen, Steve, man," Hamed said, "uh, you know, and I understand what you said. You're, like, this is a serious situation, of course. It's murder. It should be serious for everyone." Hamed suggested police were only acting on information given them by accusing family members.

  Koopman said they didn't make arrests based on people's opinions. He accused Hamed of dishonouring his sisters by not telling the truth. Then he left the interview room and Detective Sergeant Mike Boyles, who had been watching the interview, entered the room. He told Hamed he'd been lying to Koopman the whole time and that his mother, meanwhile, had been telling the truth.

  "If your mom says all three of you were at the locks … on the night … if she told us you were all there, would that be a lie or the truth?" asked Boyles.

  "I don't believe that my mom says this," Hamed replied.

  "Well, I'm telling you she said that. I witnessed it with my own eyes," said Boyles.

  "Well, if she was there, I don't know, but I wasn't."

  Boyles became more assertive, telling Hamed that if he couldn't explain why his phone was in the Kingston area on June 27 in the middle of the vacation, then, "That's your story. That's just perfect." Police would take the information to trial.

  Boyles switched to the headlight pieces found at the locks. "Was the headlight smashed when you l
eft at two in the morning?" he asked.

  "Uh, just forget about …" said Hamed.

  Boyles told Hamed they had been listening to the family's conversations on wiretaps for the past several days.

  "Seriously," said Hamed, "you have no idea what you're saying."

  Hamed looked at the photographs Boyles had put on the table and became entranced by those showing two of his dead sisters. Boyles asked him again to tell the truth.

  "They're your family there, your blood," he said. "And I know, I know they weren't respecting the culture and they weren't respecting tradition."

  "No, it was nothing like that," Hamed replied.

  Boyles reminded Hamed of all the wiretapped conversations in the van. "These aren't conversations of innocent people," said Boyles. "You guys aren't mastermind criminals, Hamed, do you understand that? You guys aren't hitmen. You guys don't know how to cover your tracks properly. You don't know how to get away with things."

  Boyles asked Hamed if he knew anyone who would want to kill his sisters. Hamed said no.

  "What do you think happened to them?"

  "What I guessed in the first place," said Hamed.

  "What was that?"

  "Taking the keys and driving," he replied. Hamed continued looking at the photos of his dead sisters after they were taken out of the car, seemingly mesmerized by them.

  "Drowning is not a peaceful death, Hamed. Drowning is a horrible way to die. You understand that? It's a horrible way," Boyles said.

  Hamed kept saying he wanted to leave. Boyles told him to wait, that they were finding the segment of Tooba's interrogation where she placed all three of them at Kingston Mills the night of the deaths.

  During the trial, the courtoom was transfixed by the exchange between this young man and Boyles, the experienced detective who had come in as the "bad cop" to Steve Koopman's "good cop." The pressure on Hamed was intense. Yet he remained defiant. Then, the hushed courtroom watched the video as Boyles took another tack.

  "I'm not going to ask you any more questions or anything," he said, "but I want you to know that at some point you're gonna go to trial and you're gonna be in court. And there's gonna be a jury or a judge who's gonna assess what happened … So I guess if you want to just look at the camera, you can look right there and see it — you can't really see it, but it's right there. And you can talk to the jury and you can talk to the judge that'll see this in a year and a half. And you can say your piece and tell them what you think and how you feel. This is your opportunity because you're not gonna get another one. The next time, you'll be in the box and it will be at trial."