- 注册
- 2007-12-11
- 消息
- 5,846
- 荣誉分数
- 1,947
- 声望点数
- 323
Montreal family mourns loss of three teens, relative
Updated Fri. Jul. 3 2009 8:59 PM ET
CTV.ca News Staff
A Montreal family is mourning the loss of three teenage girls and a 50-year-old relative, after they died returning home from a family holiday in Niagara Falls.
<table width="401"><tbody><tr><td>
</td><td rowspan="2" style="width: 160px;"> <script> if (no_ad==""){ document.write('<scr'+'ipt type="text/javascript" src="http://ad.ca.doubleclick.net/adj/ctv/PhotoSky;abr=!webtv;mode=;loc=hub;adpg=PhotoSky;;ops=;pos=;kw=;nc=;sz=160x600;tile=;ord=1155652443700?"></sc'+'ript>'); } </script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://ad.ca.doubleclick.net/adj/ctv/PhotoSky;abr=%21webtv;mode=;loc=hub;adpg=PhotoSky;;ops=;pos=;kw=;nc=;sz=160x600;tile=;ord=1155652443700?"></script>
</td> </tr> <tr> <td id="photo_td">
The parents of the three teens killed in Kingston, Ont., Mohammed Shafi and Tobba Yahya, speak with reporters at their home in St. Leonard, Que. on Friday, July 3, 2009.
</td></tr></tbody></table>
Nineteen-year-old Zainab Shafi, 19, along with her sisters Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13, were found inside a black, four-door 2004 Nissan Sentra, that was found submerged near a Rideau Canal lock northeast of Kingston, Ont., on Tuesday morning.
Fifty-year-old Rona Amir Mohammed, a relative, was also inside the car.
The teenage girls' parents said the family had moved to Canada only two years ago, after first living in Afghanistan and later in Dubai.
The family has now lost three of their seven children, who were living in the north-end Montreal borough of St-Leonard prior to their deaths.
Through tears, Tobba Yahya, the mother of the three teenagers, told CTV Montreal that the family moved to Canada for a better life.
"I came to Canada for my children because in Afghanistan there is no safety," she said, breaking into tears, when speaking to reporters.
The teenagers' father, Mohammed Shafi, said he hoped his children would be able to go to school in Canada and one day own a house and start a business.
The family had spent the night at a motel in Kingston, before they planned to return home to St-Leonard. They took two cars on the trip, but when the remaining family members woke up on Tuesday morning, the Nissan Sentra was missing.
Mohammed Shafi told CTV Montreal's Stephane Giroux that his eldest daughter, Zainab, is rebellious and has a history of trying to take the car out on the road for joy rides. But she does not have a driver's licence.
At the motel, the 19-year-old asked her mother for the keys to the car -- saying she left some clothes in the vehicle -- and her father suspects she may have gone on a joy ride, with her sisters and their relative in tow.
From there, Shafi thinks something went wrong and they ended up in the water -- a tragic accident, as none of his daughters knew how to swim.
On Tuesday morning, a Parks Canada employee discovered their car, which was submerged in about three metres of water, about 10 metres north of a canal lock.
Police are not clear as to how the car ended up in the canal, as there are no obvious tire tracks to follow, and the car would had to have passed through several barriers to make it into the water.
It is believed that the car likely ended up in the canal sometime Tuesday morning, between midnight and the mid-morning.
Investigators have recently sought out the surveillance tapes from two local gas bars, though they have given few statements about what they are specifically looking for.
Cynthia Warren, the owner of a convenience store near where the car was found, said police visited her on Friday, in order to look at her surveillance tapes.
Warren said the officers left without saying anything, and she does not remember seeing the Nissan Sentra that was pulled from the canal.
Across the road from her store, Stop and Save owner Sumit Kumar said police also visited his store on Friday.
Kingston police Const. Michael Menor said investigators are checking everything in the area.
The car is now in police custody and will be examined by mechanics to see if it suffered a breakdown, or if there are any forensic clues as to what happened.
Autopsies were performed on the victims' bodies in Ottawa on Thursday, though it was expected to take some time to determine if drowning was the cause of death.
With a report from CTV Montreal's Stephane Giroux, CTV's Genevieve Beauchemin and files from The Canadian Press
