Mike on Crime

By Sunny Freeman, THE CANADIAN PRESS
KINGSTON, Ont. – Curious passersby gathered on a picturesque eastern Ontario bridge Wednesday trying to piece together the shocking mystery of how three teenage sisters and one of their relatives ended up dead in a car in the Rideau Canal.

The bodies of three teens, ages 13, 17 and 19, all from Quebec, were found along with a 50-year-old woman, described only as a relative, inside a vehicle that was submerged in the northernmost lock at Kingston Mills, northeast of Kingston.

“It’s a real mystery,” said Steve Weeks, whose houseboat is docked about 20 metres beyond the crash site and was the only boat stationed there at the time of the incident.

“It’s hard to figure out how a car could drive between all that stuff (surrounding the locks) and go in the water.”

When he woke Tuesday morning he didn’t notice anything strange and at first thought a weird joke had been played.

“And then, somebody said that they had seen a body in the car,” he said.

“When it moved from a teenage prank to dark reality, that was it for me.”

A vase of daffodils stood beside the lock Wednesday, the lone memorial at the scene of the crash that police believe occurred sometime Monday night or early Tuesday morning.

The group had been on vacation in southern Ontario and were on their way back to Quebec, said police in Kingston, about 260 kilometres east of Toronto.

“It breaks my heart just saying it,” Const. Michael Menor said in an interview with The Canadian Press.

“You have a family, they’ve all drowned. It’s just horrifyingly tragic.”

A lockmaster for Parks Canada discovered the car, which neighbours say was a newer model Nissan, about 10 metres from the lock doors about 9:30 a.m. Tuesday when they were trying to open the doors for the day.

Mike Hanna, a volunteer for Kingston police, surveyed the area Wednesday afternoon in an attempt to figure out how the car ended up in the lock. He surmised it must have left the roadway and drove down a patch of grass, either over a concrete barrier or through a gate, and through two of the poles on the dock.

There were no obvious tire tracks to indicate what happened.

“We don’t know for sure which way it went,” Hanna said.

“There was nothing upset here – none of the garbage bins or benches, there was no property damage, really.”

In the summer, about 40 boats use the locks daily, said a Parks Canada spokesman.

Investigators are puzzled, Menor said, because they have yet to determine what the car carrying the four Quebec women was doing in the area.

“It’s very, very peculiar. There’s no rhyme or reason,” he said.

“It’s just not an area that anyone would drive their car out to.”

After the car was discovered Tuesday, police divers pulled the bodies of the four victims along with their car out of the water.

So far, police say no one has come forward to say they saw the car go into the water.

“Again, it’s strange,” Menor said.

Police declined to release the names of the victims or their hometowns, saying loved-ones had not been notified. A national news agency reported that all four victims were from Montreal.

The case is a coroner’s investigation, but police haven’t ruled anything out. Menor said police consider the deaths suspicious until the investigation proves otherwise, something that will be aided by autopsies scheduled for Thursday in Ottawa.

As part of the probe, police have seized the car and turned it over to mechanics for an inspection to see whether there was a mechanical breakdown or other forensic evidence that might help investigators.

“Right now we’ve got pretty much our whole detective office trying to figure this one out. Hopefully we can,” Menor said.

“It’s a bit of a mystery, but we’re going to do our darndest.”

Several neighbours with houses overlooking a glistening lake, near where the car was found, said they didn’t hear or see anything strange until investigators started gathering Tuesday morning.

Marlene MacDonald said there are no lights on the swerving and narrow roadway, where two bridges pass over the locks.

“If it was someone from out of town, or someone not familiar with the area, they may not have known which way they were going,” she said.

The quaint area surrounding the locks was bustling on a sunny Canada Day, and many came to fish while others strolled around the locks, barbecued and played guitar.

But several puzzled Kingston residents went to the area to see for themselves what the commotion was about.

Serena Ryder and Nick Kmit, both 20, of Kingston, debated theories about how the car could have possibly ended up in the water below.

“I have been here so many times for little walks, but knowing that happened here is so weird now. … I don’t think anyone will ever really know 1/8how it happened 3/8,” Ryder said.

Kmit said he didn’t believe it was possible to accidentally make that 90 degree turn and drive down the grass, only to make another slight turn into the water.

Several others across the country also mourned family members killed on the Canada Day holiday.

Investigators were probing an early morning crash that killed one man on a stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway running through Sudbury, Ont.

In Calgary, a 51-year-old man died after his Pontiac Grand Prix collided with the back of a tow truck removing a broken down vehicle at the side of the road just after midnight.

Another man, 24, from Mill River, N.S., was killed after his car overturned in a deep ditch and ejected his body in a single-vehicle collision just before 6 a.m. in Brooklyn, N.S.

A search was also underway for a missing canoeist at Antler Lake, 35 kilometres east of Edmonton. The man, believed to be 21 years old, disappeared after his boat capsized Wednesday afternoon.