From the Archives: Death on the Rideau and the Shafia Case

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Editor’s note: This article was originally published in the Kingston Whig Standard on July 2, 2009.

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Today, autopsies will be performed in Ottawa on the bodies of four women who were found dead Tuesday in a car that sank north of the Kingston Mills Locks.

The women were aged 50, 19, 17 and 13. They were found in a black 2004 Nissan Altima with Quebec license plates at a depth of almost two metres.

The three teenagers were sisters. The 50-year-old woman was confirmed to be a relative of the teenagers.

The police gave the the victims‘ names.

The the victims They stopped in Kingston on their way from a vacation near Toronto to their home in Quebec, police said.

Kingston Police Sergeant Chris Scott said there was no direct evidence of how the car ended up in the water. Police have recovered the vehicle and are examining it.

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The car was found on Tuesday morning just behind the northernmost of the four locks, when the lock keeper discovered an oil slick in the water. The locks, the southernmost in the Curtains Channel was closed and an OPP dive team was called.

Initial witness statements said there were two bodies in the car. Police later confirmed that there were four.

At about the same time the car was discovered, a family from Quebec reported missing family members to Kingston police.

The case is a forensic pathologist Investigationbut Scott said police are still treating it as “suspicious.”

“We want to make sure we cover all outstanding leads.” he said. “There could well be a fatal accident, but we want to make sure that any evidence is covered up.”

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Scott said it was not clear where each occupant was sitting in the car before the collision. He said it was too early to say how fast the car was traveling before it sank.

A witness on a houseboat moored north of the locks said he heard a banging noise coming from the dock early Tuesday morning. He did not say when he heard the noise and declined to give his name.

John Moore, a member of the Canadian Navy, was on a four-day camping and boating trip through the locks with his 13-year-old son Liam and a friend.

They had spent the night on Cedar Island on Monday and were on their way home to Manotick, a small community on the Curtains just south of Ottawa, Tuesday morning.

Moore said their boat, a small aluminum boat full of camping gear, was halfway through the second lock when canal workers discovered the submerged car.

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“They said they could not let us through,” Moore said in an interview at the dock where his boat was moored below the first lock on Tuesday.

The car was in the water near the east side of the lock wall with the front of the car facing Colonel By Lake. It was close enough to the lock gates to prevent them from opening.

Moore, 53, is a recreational diver and had his equipment with him.

“I volunteered to check it out for (the police) so they could at least get a license plate or something.Moore told the Whig-Standard.

He put on his equipment and descended into the cloudy Water.

“It looked like two young women,” said Moore. He said he had never seen bodies underwater before and found the crime scene “sad.”

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One of the women he saw was sitting in the front seat, the other in the back seat. The back seat passenger was not a child, he said.

Moore said because the view is so poorhe could only see that the woman in the front seat was wearing jeans.

“Her feet were down and her back is arched … the dead‘s man car,” he said. “She had taken off her seatbelt, if she had been wearing one.”

Moore was stunned by the scene at the edge of the lock where the car must have entered the water.

Only a few markings were visible on the edge of the stone.

“It is a totally crazy accident because there was no Damage to the lock works,” he said. “It looked like an accident, but it’s absolutely difficult to read.”

The Curtains The canal is a 200-kilometer-long masterpiece of engineering that was built in the early 19th century as a military connection between Lake Ontario and Ottawa.

In 2007 it was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. Kingston Mills is the southernmost lock station on the canal.

Kingston Police are asking anyone who saw a black four-door Nissan Altima or similar vehicle near Kingston Mills between midnight and 8 a.m. Tuesday to contact them.

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