Skip to content

Police mum on reports of arrests in deaths

Troubling questions about the mysterious case of four Montreal women found dead in a car at the bottom of the Rideau Canal came back to the fore Wednesday after unconfirmed media reports said arrests had been made in the case.
memorial
A vase of flowers sits at the Kingston Mills locks

KINGSTON, Ont. — Troubling questions about the mysterious case of four Montreal women found dead in a car at the bottom of the Rideau Canal came back to the fore Wednesday after unconfirmed media reports said arrests had been made in the case.

Kingston police Const. Michael Menor would only say a news conference scheduled for Thursday would “update” the investigation into the deaths of 19-year-old Zainab Shafia, her two sisters and 50-year-old caregiver Rona Amir Mohammed.

Shafia and her sisters Sahar, 17, and Getti, 13, were originally from the Afghan capital of Kabul, as was Mohammed, who helped raise the girls. They moved to Canada two years ago.

The women were found at the bottom of the Rideau Canal’s lock in Kingston Mills and investigators originally described their deaths as “suspicious,” although no evidence of foul play was disclosed.

Neither the official cause of death nor the results of autopsies have been disclosed.

Police were baffled by how the car left the road and ended up in three metres of water in the lock, which would be difficult for a car to access. At the time, police said they weren’t certain who was in the driver’s seat but confirmed all four females were in the vehicle when it was recovered.