Zameer takes stand at his trial in police death
Plainclothes officer was run over in 2021 incident
For the first time, a jury is hearing directly from the man accused of deliberately running over and killing Toronto police Const. Jeffrey Northrup almost three years ago.
Umar Zameer, 34, took the stand Tuesday afternoon in the downtown Toronto Superior Court where he pleaded not guilty to firstdegree murder when the trial began three weeks ago.
It was the first time Zameer has spoken about Northrup’s death since his arrest.
Wearing a dark suit and tie, Zameer bowed slightly in the direction of the judge and jury before settling into the witness box. Before the court adjourned until Thursday, Zameer answered his lawyer’s questions about his background and described what he and his family did leading up to the events of early July 2, 2021, when he drove his BMW over Northrup in the underground parking lot beneath Nathan Phillip’s Square.
At the time, Northrup and several other officers, working in plain clothes, were investigating a stabbing.
Prosecutors allege that when Northrup and his partner, Lisa Forbes, approached the Zameer family vehicle, they identified themselves as police officers and asked to speak to him. Zameer fatally ran over Northrup with his BMW while attempting to flee. The Crown says he did this deliberately; the defence says it was an accident because he didn’t realize they were police officers and thought the family was under attack by thugs.
According to three police officers who have testified, Northrup was standing right in front of Zameer’s BMW waving at him to stop when he was run over head-on. However, two traffic collision experts — one called by the prosecution — have testified Northrup was initially knocked to the ground as Zameer reversed his car, and that he didn’t see Northrup on the ground as he drove forward on top of him.
Last week, Zameer’s wife Aaida Shaikh was called as a witness for the prosecution. Zameer filled in more biographical details Tuesday, telling the jury how he was born in Pakistan and lived in Malaysia before marrying Shaikh. The couple now has three children, all under the age of five. They came to Canada in 2017, figuring it was a “better place to raise our kids,” the softspoken man told court, his hands clasped in front of him. He is a selfemployed accountant who provides bookkeeping services to different corporations.
On the evening of July 2, 2021, Zameer and Shaikh, who was eight months pregnant at the time, had both finished working at home in Woodbridge when they decided to combine business and recreation. The couple own two cars, a BMW and a Toyota, and use a car rental app. They had a reservation for the Toyota downtown, so they dropped the car off and headed over to Nathan Phillips Square to partake in the Canada Day “celebrations,” arriving sometime after 10 p.m. Surveillance camera footage tracked the family’s movements as they walked around, showing Zameer playing around with his young son as his wife pushed the child’s stroller.
After seeing a shirtless man — who was bleeding from the abdomen area — Zameer and his family met a friend on the terrace above the skate rental kiosk in the square, before deciding to call it a night when the clock at Old City Hall struck midnight.
After collapsing the stroller and putting it in the trunk, Shaikh put their boy into his car seat and Zameer said he got into the driver’s seat and turned the car on, he said, contradicting Forbes’ account that he was still outside the vehicle when she and Northrup first approached.
Defence lawyer Nader Hasan stopped the narrative there, leaving Zameer to resume his testimony Thursday.
Zameer is on trial for first-degree murder because Northrup, 55, was a police officer acting in the line of duty.