Reconstruction…

THE physical evidence gathered from the cars was crucial. Constable Chris Prent, a collision reconstruction expert with the Ontario Provincial Police, was brought onto the case in September of 2009 to recreate what happened at the locks the night of June 29-30, and conducted a careful examination of the two Shafia vehicles. With Gananoque Police constable Gordon Boulton, a licensed mechanic, Prent went to see both vehicles at the Kingston Police station.

They took the wheels off the Nissan and found the brakes in good working order. They checked the throttle. Both vehicles were mechanically sound. Prent noted the other irregularities about how the Nissan was found — the headlights off, no one wearing seatbelts, the ignition off, and the car in the lowest gear.

The reclined seats, he said, would have made it "unnatural to be operating this motor vehicle." Prent turned his attention to the vehicles in relation to the physical layout at Kingston Mills. Even though the Nissan was facing back towards the edge it had fallen over, he decided the car had gone in head first. He determined that, from the scrapes on the left side of the Nissan, the car had gotten hung up on the wooden step attached to the lock gate. (This was probably because the car had front-wheel drive, which meant it needed traction to keep moving.) "When it resisted the step, it resisted forward motion and got hung up," Prent said.

There was another snag. As the front axle of the Nissan rolled over the edge of the lock wall, the undercarriage would have dropped down, again stopping the forward motion. "It would require a certain force to be applied to the rear of the vehicle to keep it moving," said Prent. "It's my opinion the Lexus [was] being applied to the left rear of the Nissan … and [was] being rotated away from the step into the canal."

When they put the Nissan on the hoist, Prent could see where undercoating had been peeled away and there was excessive gouging to the frame, signs of how the car rotated as it went over the edge into the water. As it hit the water, the Nissan began a slow, counter-clockwise rotation until it was facing where it had gone in.

Prent was asked about the additional damage to the Lexus that Hamed had reported to Montreal police in the grocery store lot. It was, he said, a clear attempt to cover up the damage from the locks.

Examining the damage to both cars, and in particular the scrapes along the bottom of the Nissan, Prent was unequivocable in his conclusion: "It's my opinion the Lexus was used to push the Nissan over the edge of the canal into the water."

This contact also explained the damages to the Lexus's headlight and missing letters from the back of the Nissan. Prent was adamant that only by applying force from behind could the Nissan have finished its deadly slide.

Yet there remained a hitch to the Crown and police theory. If the Nissan was being driven while being bumped into the gate step, who was driving?

Gordon Boulton, the cop-mechanic, testified as to how the car operated and how the scenario described by Chris Prent could have been acted out. In fact, Boulton got a 2004 Nissan Sentra just like the Shafias' and did some experimenting of his own. The particular model of Nissan owned by the Shafias was equipped with an automatic stick shift located in the console between the two front seats. To get the car out of park, the ignition must be turned on and taken out of the lock position and the brake pedal must also be pressed down.

If the car was running and put into neutral, Boulton said, the driver could get out of the vehicle and leave it sitting stationary. With the driver's side window rolled down — as it was found on the bottom of the lake — all a person would have to do is reach in and pull the shift stick back to put the car in gear — again, as it was found in the water.

Boulton ran this exact experiment on the test Nissan. "I was surprised," he told the court. "It accelerated rather quickly." If the car were to jump forward and get stuck on the step, it would be possible for the person now outside the car to reach back in and merely shut the car off using the key situated on the steering column, turning out the headlights in the process.

When the car was recovered, police found the key was off and the stick shift was in the lowest gear. This scenario, of course, raised further questions. Were the four women dead or alive, conscious or unconscious, when the car entered the lake and water began to seep inside? Why would anyone who was conscious not have tried to escape from the car? Great expectations were held out for the man who might answer these and other nagging questions — Dr. Christopher Milroy, the forensic pathologist who examined the bodies at the Ottawa General Hospital.