- Jurors found the 34-year-old accountant not guilty of all charges in the death of Const. Jeffrey Northrup.
Umar Zameer, right, speaks to media, with lawyers Nader Hasan, middle, and Alexandra Heine.
Toronto, Canada: A jury has acquitted Umar Zameer in the death of Toronto police Const. Jeffrey Northrup, accepting that what happened in the parking garage below Nathan Phillips Square early July 2, 2021 was a horrible, tragic accident and not a crime.
“Canada didn’t let injustice to happen so I thank Canada,” the 34-year-old accountant said standing outside the downtown Toronto courthouse with his relieved and happy lawyers, Nader Hasan and Alexandra Heine. Zameer called them his “angels.”
On Sunday, after three days of deliberations, jurors found the 34-year-old accountant not guilty of all charges including first- and second-degree murder and manslaughter. Zameer was on trial for first-degree murder because Northrup was a police officer killed in the execution of his duties.
When the verdict was read out, Zameer gasped, and then started crying loudly as he hugged Nader and Heine, while his wife, Aaida Shaikh, cried into the shoulders of family members seated in the body of the courtroom.
“Mr. Zameer, you’re free to go, sir,” Superior Court Justice Anne Molloy. “You have my … deepest apologies for what you have been through.” Zameer walked quickly to the front row of the courtroom and embraced his wife for several minutes, both weeping loudly.
Molloy also thanked jurors, telling them it had been a “long, hard haul. Thank you so much for your service. You’re now discharged.”
After the jury’s decision Northrup’s widow, Margaret Northrup, cried on the other side of the courtroom as she hugged members of the Toronto Police Association (TPA). Later, outside the courthouse she thanked the prosecutors and police, including Chief Myron Demkiw, and the Toronto Police Association.
“I am very disappointed in today’s outcome, from day one, all I’ve wanted was accountability. We miss Jeff everyday. However, we continue on with him in our hearts, never to be forgotten, a hero in life not death.”
Demkiw paid tribute to Northrup and expressed disappointment with the verdict.
“I share the feelings of our members who were hoping for a different outcome,” Demkiw said reading a statement. TPA president Jon Reid said while the jury’s verdict will stir up many feelings, including anger and frustration, “we cannot lose sight that we lost a hero, a husband, a father and a friend.” The three declined to answer any questions.
The not guilty verdict means jurors accepted Zameer’s evidence that he did not know Northrup, 55, dressed in plain clothes, was a police officer, or that he intended to kill anyone, or that he committed an unlawful act — dangerous driving — while trying to evade Northrup and his partner, whom he mistakenly believed were attacking his family.
The jury’s decision also rejects the high-profile public narrative that emerged immediately after Northrup — a beloved veteran officer in downtown 52 Division’s major crime unit — was killed. At the time, then-interim police Chief James Ramer told the media, “We believe this was an intentional, deliberate act.”
Later, Zameer was subject to further scorn when he was granted bail in a rare decision for such a serious case. Premier Doug Ford said that ruling was “beyond comprehension” while then-Mayor John Tory said it was “almost impossible to imagine” why Zameer would be released.
Hasan had urged jurors to acquit Zameer of all charges, saying to find him guilty of anything would “compound tragedy with injustice.”
This was a “terribly unfortunate accident, not a criminal act,” he told the jury during his closing address Wednesday. The way Zameer drove to protect his family from what he thought were aggressive criminals was reasonable and understandable “under these circumstances.”
Zameer was “trying to escape from what he thought was certain danger in order to protect his wife and child,” he said.
The defence lawyer recounted some of the evidence presented in court over the last month.
After celebrating Canada Day in downtown Toronto, Zameer, his pregnant wife, Aaida Shaikh, and their two-year-old son were in their vehicle getting ready to leave the nearly deserted parking garage when a man and a woman “rushed” up to their vehicle. The couple had no idea they were police officers dressed in plain clothes, Hasan said.
The couple “genuinely thought they were being robbed or worse and when they tried to escape by driving forward, the plain clothes officers on foot got more aggressive” before two other officers “boxed them in with their unmarked van,” he said.
Zameer then reversed his car and “unfortunately, Officer Northrup pursued the BMW as it reversed,” Hasan said. This put him in the path of the BMW that knocked him to the ground, and when Zameer drove forward, he couldn’t see Northrup and ran over him, Hasan said, noting that two traffic collision experts supported that’s what happened.
“Nobody wanted or intended this tragic outcome, certainly not Mr. Zameer,” Hasan said.
Prosecutors had an uphill battle proving murder after the testimony of three police eyewitnesses was undermined by video surveillance footage and two traffic collision reconstruction experts, one of them a Crown witness.
During the trial, when the jury was absent, Molloy repeatedly attacked the Crown’s case for murder and predicted the jury would reject it.
Northrup had 31 years on the job and had spent a number of years training new recruits before his promotion to the 52 Division major crime unit.
He was also a member of the Chief’s Ceremonial Unit, which serves as an honour guard for special occasions.
Northrup’s funeral shut down a parade route through downtown Toronto to BMO Field, where the officer was remembered as “the hardest of all workers,” who would take on “any job with a smile.”
The controversy surrounding Zameer’s bail release in September 2021 was compounded by a publication ban that barred revealing the judge’s reasons. The jury’s verdict now lifts that ban.
Justice Jill Copeland released Zameer on bail after finding the Crown’s case for murder was “weak.”
“The Crown’s theory — that Mr. Zameer, who the evidence supports was out for a normal family evening with his pregnant wife and young son, who has no criminal record, who has a good work and education history, suddenly decided to intentionally kill or cause bodily harm that he knew was likely to cause death to a police officer — runs contrary to logic and common sense,” Copeland wrote in her 53-page reasons.
Copeland, who has since been elevated to Ontario’s highest court, the Ontario Court of Appeal, did find the Crown had a “reasonably strong case for manslaughter,” although it was “not an overwhelming case.”
In a later decision — not covered by the same publication ban — Copeland criticized public officials for publicly commenting on the bail decision without knowledge of her reasons.
Copeland called their comments “uninformed” and predicted the anticipated trial would paint a “very different picture.”
No comments :
Post a Comment