For four seconds, Nathaniel Veltman slammed on the accelerator, hurtling his pickup truck toward a Muslim family of five taking an evening walk in London, Ontario, killing four of them. The only survivor was a 9-year-old boy.
The jury, after less than a day of deliberation, found Mr. Veltman, 22, guilty of four counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder involving the young boy during the June 2021 attack.
Mr. Veltman was also charged with terrorism, and jurors heard extensive testimony about his obsession with white supremacist ideologies. But under Canadian law, jurors were not supposed to reach a verdict on that charge, which would later be handed down by a judge.
The case represents the first time in Canada that terrorism charges have been applied to a far-right extremism case, according to the government agency that prosecutes federal crimes.
Mr. Veltman’s sentencing date will be set for December and a judge will determine whether he is guilty of terrorism. A conviction for first-degree murder automatically carries a sentence of life in prison with no possibility of parole for 25 years.
Following the verdict, Christopher Hicks, Mr. Veltman’s lawyer, said his client was “in shock” because of the long prison sentence that awaits him.
Mr. Veltman admitted to police that he thought the victims he ran over were Muslim because of the clothes they were wearing and that is why he aimed his truck at them, prosecutors said during the trial which lasted 10 weeks.
Mr. Veltman became obsessed with white supremacist ideology, prosecutors said, even writing his own manifesto called “A White Awakening,” which he completed five days before descending on the pedestrians.
“His attack was, in Mr. Veltman’s mind, in his own words, terrorism,” a prosecutor, Fraser Ball, said during his closing argument Wednesday.
“It was intended to deliver a brutal message,” the expletive-ridden Mr. Ball said, adding: “It was important to him that his actions inspired other white nationalists. “It was important to him that his brutal message was not just an empty threat from an imprisoned person.”
Mr. Veltman had also searched online for information about a white supremacist shooter in Christchurch, New Zealand, who killed 51 people in an attack on two mosques in 2019, prosecutors said.
The trial was held in Windsor, Ontario, just across the river from Detroit, after the judge in the case, Justice Renee Pomerance of the Ontario Superior Court, ruled that he should not have place in London, halfway between Toronto and Detroit.
Similar decisions have been made when a judge was concerned about jury bias, although the reasons for Judge Pomerance’s decision are protected by a publication ban.
Mr. Veltman’s lawyers did not dispute that their client drove into the Muslim family, but argued that he acted impulsively after consuming psilocybin, commonly known as magic mushrooms, several hours before the attack.
He also suffered from mental health issues and struggled “with the urge or obsession to put his foot on the gas,” Judge Pomerance told jurors during his closing instructions, summarizing the evidence presented during the trial.
The Afzaal family was a stranger to Mr. Veltman, then 20 and working in an egg-processing factory in London, a university town of more than half a million people surrounded by farmland.
Mr. Veltman drove past the Afzaals near a busy intersection and turned around to run them over, prosecutors said.
Three generations of the family were killed: the youngest was 15-year-old Yumnah Afzaal. His parents, Salman Afzaal, 46, a physiotherapist, and Madiha Salman, 44, a doctoral student in civil engineering, died alongside Mr. Afzaal’s mother, Talat Afzaal, 74.
Mr. Veltman fled the scene from the crash, driving through red lights until he was arrested in the parking lot of a nearby shopping center. He wore a bulletproof vest, a helmet and a T-shirt with a crusader’s cross, a symbol that has various interpretations in Christianity but has also been adopted by far-right extremists.
In a recording of an emergency call played for the jury, Mr. Veltman told a taxi driver who called 911 that he had committed the attack and wanted to be arrested.
“Mr. Veltman had a lot of things going on at the scene of his arrest, even by his own testimony: very disrespectful to the police, very rude and arrogant, but not depressed or tormented or discouraged,” Mr. Ball said during his closing argument. “The adrenaline was pumping, the excitement. Mr. Veltman had the smile of a man who has just done exactly what he spent months planning.
Jurors also watched a video of Mr. Veltman’s confession to a detective in a police interrogation room, where he appeared relaxed, prosecutors said.
Mr. Veltman, who testified in his own defense, said that a day before the deadly attack he drove to Toronto, about two hours east, and was seized by the urgency of killing Muslims, but that he ultimately did not follow through.
Legal experts said prosecutors’ decision to pursue terrorism charges marks a significant shift in how certain acts of violence are categorized.
“For years we have only understood terrorism as those inspired by Islam do. So this is a recognition that there are multiple forms of terrorism that present risks in the Canadian context ” said Barbara Perry, professor and director of the Center on Bias, Hate and Extremism at Ontario Tech University in Oshawa.
The attack shocked Canadians and came during a period of restrictions on gatherings to curb the spread of the coronavirus. The provincial government has temporarily lifted orders allowing thousands of people to gather for a memorial attended by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
“The lingering grief, trauma and irreplaceable void left by the loss of generations has pierced us deeply,” Tabinda Bukhari, Madiha Salman’s mother, told reporters outside the courtroom after the verdict. “Their loss and our pain will always be palpable. »
