Justice Anne Molloy, left to right, Umar Zameer, Detective Adam Taylor, Nader Hasan and Michael Cantlon crown are shown in a courtroom sketch in Toronto on March 20.Alexandra Newbould/The Canadian Press
A collision reconstructionist is telling jurors he believes a Toronto police officer was knocked to the ground before he was fatally run over.
Toronto police officer Jeff Bassingthwaite is testifying at the trial of Umar Zameer, who has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder in the death of Det. Const. Jeffrey Northrup.
Northrup died on July 2, 2021, after he was struck by a vehicle in an underground parking garage at Toronto City Hall.
Bassingthwaite says he concluded Northrup was knocked down by the car’s front left fender as it was backing up out of a parking space, then rolled under the vehicle as it accelerated forward down the laneway.
He says security footage from the garage shows a lighter coloured “unidentified object” on the ground below the front bumper, and he believes that object is Northrup.
The officer says the video then shows the car’s front end rise as if going over a speed bump, but there were no speed bumps in the garage.