Father says daughter had keys to car the night vehicle fell into Ontario lock

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MONTREAL - The devastated father of three teenage girls killed when their vehicle plunged into an Ontario canal fears the accident could be the result of his eldest daughter's penchant for taking the family car without permission.

The bodies of three sisters - Geeti, 13, Sahar, 17, and Zainab Shafia, 19 - and family relative Rona Amir Mohammed were found Tuesday in a submerged car at the bottom of a lock in Kingston.

The girls' father, Mohammed Shafee, said yesterday in an interview at his Montreal home that Zainab didn't have a driver's permit and frequently took his keys to start one of his vehicles.

He said she started one of his cars without permission when they were vacationing in Niagara Falls, Ont., and backed it into a parked car.

"No driving lessons, no good to drive," Shafee said through a thick accent about his daughter's limited experience behind the wheel.

He said the night she died, Zainab asked her mother for the keys to their black Nissan sedan, claiming she wanted to put something inside.

"My daughter come to (her) mother, 'Give me car keys, me take,'" he said.

The family was returning from five days in Niagara Falls and had stopped for the night in a Kingston hotel to break up the drive to Montreal.

He woke up early Tuesday morning to find one of the family cars missing from the hotel's parking lot.

Shafee then checked the room where his three girls and Amir Mohammed, his 50-year-old cousin (previous reports said she was an aunt), were staying - they were also gone.

"At 7:30, sleeping finished, go to check, no more car, no more three daughters, no more cousin," Shafee said, adding he has no clue why they all left in the car without telling him or his wife.

While he spoke, the girls' mother, Tobba Yahya, cried as she talked on a cordless phone. She paced nervously from room to room in their modest four-bedroom townhouse in the city's St-Leonard borough.

"They loved me, they loved (their) father," Yahya said in a later interview as she fought back tears.

"I come back, my home is empty."

The family, who originate from Kabul, Afghanistan, but moved to Canada two years ago after living in Dubai, had taken two vehicles on the trip.

Before the crash, Shafee and Yahya had seven children aged eight to 19 years old.

Shafee said his wife and their four other children are shattered by the deaths and have been crying for days.