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
Three teenage sisters and their father's first wife, who were allegedly drowned by their family, were already unconscious before the car they were in plunged into a canal, a police interrogator repeatedly suggested to the girls' mother.
The trial of a Montreal family accused of killing the four people resumed Tuesday with the continuation of the interrogation video of Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 41.
Ms. Yahya, her husband Mohammad Shafia, 58, and their son, Hamed, 20, have each pleaded not guilty to four counts of first-degree murder. They are accused of killing three teenage Shafia sisters and Mr. Shafia's other wife in a polygamous marriage.
The trial was abruptly adjourned Thursday after one of the accused, apparently Mr. Shafia, was taken to hospital the night before. In court that day he wept as he watched the video of police interrogating Yahya the day they were arrested.
Minutes after the trial resumed Tuesday with the rest of Ms. Yahya's interrogation video, Mr. Shafia again buried his head in his hands and appeared to cry.
The interrogator, RCMP Insp. Shahin Mehdizadeh, who was brought in to conduct the interview in Farsi, asks Ms. Yahya several times how none of the four people managed to escape from the car as it slowly moved toward the water, got hung up on the edge of the canal, then sunk.
"If you think, you are sitting here right now, I push you and throw you into the water, you just sit and do nothing and wait to get drowned?" Mr. ehdizadeh asks. "It's impossible, madam. Even if you sleep on the chair, you will wake up."
Ms. Yahya says maybe they were unconscious but asks why the autopsies haven't shown anything. Court has heard the autopsies concluded the causes of death were drowning, but that it couldn't be determined if they drowned in the canal.
Mr. Mehdizadeh says there are some substances that don't necessarily show up on tests, but Ms. Yahya says she would never poison her children.
The bodies of Shafia sisters, Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13, and Rona Amir Mohammad, 50, were found inside a submerged car on June 30, 2009, in the locks in the Rideau Canal in Kingston.
The family, on their way back to Montreal from a trip to Niagara Falls, Ont., originally told police the eldest daughter took the keys when they stopped at a motel in Kingston for the night and must have taken the car for a joy ride that ended tragically.
During the interrogation Ms. Yahya eventually tells Mr. Mehdizadeh that she, her husband and her son were in fact there when the car went into the canal, and that Mr. Shafia must have done it because she fainted, and her son might have fainted, too.
Yet, Mehdizadeh says, nobody went to the police until the next morning to file a missing persons report, despite at least knowing the car had plunged into the water.
"Is this honour, madam?" Mr. Mehdizadeh asks. "Didn't you do anything for them? Nobody did anything to stop them? Four people died and everybody just watched them. Everybody just fainted."
Mr. Mehdizadeh shows Yahya cellphone records that he says indicate Sahar was on her cellphone non-stop for most of the trip, then after they stopped at a McDonald's near Ajax, Ont., the cellphone activity abruptly ends.