The Montreal accident…

MONTREAL police constable Nathalie Ledoux was working traffic patrol the morning of June 30 when she was dispatched to respond to a 911 call in the parking lot of a shopping centre in St. Leonard, a suburb of Montreal, just a few minutes' drive from the Shafia home on rue Bonnivet.

When Ledoux arrived at the shopping centre at 8:03 am — about the same time canalman John Bruce was arriving for work at Kingston Mills — Hamed Shafia was there with the Lexus. He told her he had driven the SUV into a yellow guardrail beside the Intermarche grocery store. The left headlight was smashed and, after taking measurements, the officer could see that the damage matched up with the height of the barrier. She noted debris from the plastic lens beneath it.

What the 15-year veteran of the city police force couldn't understand was why Hamed chose to park where he did. The lot was virtually empty at that time of the morning. He had his choice of parking spots closer to the storefront. The guardrail was around the side of the building, protecting a garbage shed.

"I found that quite [peculiar]. He could have taken an easier way," Ledoux later told the court through a French translator. "Why would he have put himself in a corner in a complicated manoeuvre?"

Ledoux recalled Hamed being "very calm" as he explained what happened. "The only thing he asked me was, 'Can I get my vehicle repaired immediately?'" Ledoux told him he could not if there was an outstanding insurance claim.

Later that day, Ledoux got a call at home telling her that the Lexus incident she'd investigated early that morning might be "linked to another kind of crime."