Yep, people who are doing pretty well trot out retarded fallacies like that, and on we go.
Police say 5 pedestrians deliberately run down in London were targeted because they were Muslims
- Thread starter B00Mer
- Start date
Fair point. That and eliminating all health and safety laws and regulations, doing away with licensure for anything, and legalizing homicide would help.
Officers tell Nathaniel Veltman trial of chaos at crash scene, arrest
Even Const. Brock Dease’s use of police jargon couldn’t hide his emotion when he described the carnage
Author of the article:Jane Sims
Published Sep 21, 2023 • Last updated 1 day ago • 5 minute read
EDITOR’S NOTE: This story includes details that may be upsetting to readers
WINDSOR – The call was a Code 1, the most serious dispatch that requires a response with lights and sirens, sending London police officers racing to a hit-and-run on what usually is a routine Sunday night shift.
Const. Brock Dease was assigned to coach fledging recruit, Const. Michael Olszowy, who was on his 12th shift with the police force. They were parked at Brescia University College when they heard the call and told dispatch they were on their way to Hyde Park and South Carriage roads, six kilometres away.
Meanwhile, Const. Patti Leavoy-Costa was driving her cruiser on Adelaide Street near Cheapside and Huron streets, and immediately headed to Oxford Street to get across the city, before she was re-directed to help with the arrest of Nathaniel Veltman, 22, in the parking lot of Cherryhill Village Mall.
At Veltman’s jury trial Thursday, Dease and Leavoy-Costa each gave dramatic accounts of what they did and saw on June 6, 2021, when the Afzaal family was struck by Veltman’s pickup truck, leaving four of them dead and one of them seriously injured.
Even Dease’s use of police jargon couldn’t hide his emotion when he described the carnage and chaos at the northwest London corner and the efforts made by emergency personnel and civilians to help the Pakistani-Muslim family.
Veltman, who has pleaded not guilty to four counts of first degree murder and one count of attempted murder, would tell the police after his arrest he ran down the family “because they were Muslim.”
Talat Afzaal, 72, her son Salman Afzaal, 46, his wife Madiha Salman, 44, and their daughter Yumnah, 15, were killed when Veltman drove his Dodge Ram pickup truck into them while they were walking home from a park during a family walk. The couple’s son, nine at the time, was severely injured but survived.
The prosecution is seeking to prove the killings were planned and deliberate murder and an act of terrorism. This is the first time Canada’s terrorism laws have been argued in front of a jury at a first-degree murder trial.
Under questioning from assistant Crown attorney Jennifer Moser, Dease described how he and Olszowy heard the dispatch about “an accident” involving pedestrians.
With Olszowy driving, they headed west on Sarnia Road and turned north toward the crash scene, arriving in four minutes. Dease said he could see another cruiser, a firetruck and several civilian vehicles pulled over in the southbound lane.
“I immediately noticed a police officer attending to a victim in the middle of the southbound lanes of Hyde Park Road,” Dease said. The officer was performing CPR.
Another victim was just south of the first, and a second police officer was just getting there to start life-saving measures.
Those two victims were Madiha Salman and Salman Afzaal.
Dease said he got out of the cruiser and saw a third victim north of where they had parked on the boulevard separating the sidewalk from Hyde Park Road.
It was an elderly woman with dark shoulder-length hair. She had serious facial injuries and was lying on her back. She had severe injuries to her abdomen and “her arms and legs both appeared to be broken,” Dease said.
It was Talat Afzaal. Olszowy checked for vital signs and began CPR. Dease’s voice broke when he described her injuries.
By then, Dease said, there were people “yelling and screaming” for him to come help a young boy who was 15 metres south of the southwest corner.
He was on his stomach on the grass, Dease said, but he was conscious. There were cuts on his hands and “he was crying and asking questions not long after I got to him.”
There was more yelling for help, this time for a fifth victim – teenager Yumnah Afzaal – who was just north of a driveway to 1420 Hyde Park Rd., four to five metres west of the sidewalk and a for-sale sign on the property.
Dease said because the boy was conscious, he left him with the civilians while he ran to the teen. She was moving her head a little, but not her extremities, Dease said. A paramedic asked Dease to grab his medical bag from the ambulance and Dease said he helped brace the teen’s neck with a firefighter and the paramedic.
After helping her, he found out CPR efforts had been stopped for Talat Afzaal. Dease said he returned to the boy, who was being helped by a paramedic. Dease said he moved civilians back to the northwest corner of the intersection, then helped get the boy on a stretcher.
It was then he noticed the tire marks in the grass, he said.
Leavoy-Costa testified she was the third cruiser to arrive at the mall parking lot and could see an officer with a man – Veltman – who was on his knees and had his hands on his head.
What caught her attention was the army-style bucket helmet he was wearing. Leavoy-Costa said she parked in front of the pickup truck in case someone else was in it and to stop it from leaving.
She said she got out of her cruiser, glanced at the two officers dealing with Veltman and then looked inside the pickup truck that had its driver’s door open and still was running. She turned off the ignition and saw a large knife, like a machete, in an orange and black sheath in the door pocket and another pocket knife in the console.
The truck’s engine was smoking, so Leavoy-Costa said she removed the keys from the ignition. She alerted the other officers to the weapons.
Veltman, she said, “was quite elevated” and “very excitable.”
“He was constantly yelling and at one point, appeared to be smiling,” she said.
He was yelling toward the cab driver who called in for assistance and then got into “a yelling match” with one of the officers, she said.
“It was a very strong tone. It was loud, drawing attention to himself,” Leavoy-Costa said, and added Veltman was “tense and jumpy.”
Leavoy-Costa is expected to continue her testimony on Friday.
jsims@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/JaneatLFPress
torontosun.com
Even Const. Brock Dease’s use of police jargon couldn’t hide his emotion when he described the carnage
Author of the article:Jane Sims
Published Sep 21, 2023 • Last updated 1 day ago • 5 minute read
EDITOR’S NOTE: This story includes details that may be upsetting to readers
WINDSOR – The call was a Code 1, the most serious dispatch that requires a response with lights and sirens, sending London police officers racing to a hit-and-run on what usually is a routine Sunday night shift.
Const. Brock Dease was assigned to coach fledging recruit, Const. Michael Olszowy, who was on his 12th shift with the police force. They were parked at Brescia University College when they heard the call and told dispatch they were on their way to Hyde Park and South Carriage roads, six kilometres away.
Meanwhile, Const. Patti Leavoy-Costa was driving her cruiser on Adelaide Street near Cheapside and Huron streets, and immediately headed to Oxford Street to get across the city, before she was re-directed to help with the arrest of Nathaniel Veltman, 22, in the parking lot of Cherryhill Village Mall.
At Veltman’s jury trial Thursday, Dease and Leavoy-Costa each gave dramatic accounts of what they did and saw on June 6, 2021, when the Afzaal family was struck by Veltman’s pickup truck, leaving four of them dead and one of them seriously injured.
Even Dease’s use of police jargon couldn’t hide his emotion when he described the carnage and chaos at the northwest London corner and the efforts made by emergency personnel and civilians to help the Pakistani-Muslim family.
Veltman, who has pleaded not guilty to four counts of first degree murder and one count of attempted murder, would tell the police after his arrest he ran down the family “because they were Muslim.”
Talat Afzaal, 72, her son Salman Afzaal, 46, his wife Madiha Salman, 44, and their daughter Yumnah, 15, were killed when Veltman drove his Dodge Ram pickup truck into them while they were walking home from a park during a family walk. The couple’s son, nine at the time, was severely injured but survived.
The prosecution is seeking to prove the killings were planned and deliberate murder and an act of terrorism. This is the first time Canada’s terrorism laws have been argued in front of a jury at a first-degree murder trial.
Under questioning from assistant Crown attorney Jennifer Moser, Dease described how he and Olszowy heard the dispatch about “an accident” involving pedestrians.
With Olszowy driving, they headed west on Sarnia Road and turned north toward the crash scene, arriving in four minutes. Dease said he could see another cruiser, a firetruck and several civilian vehicles pulled over in the southbound lane.
“I immediately noticed a police officer attending to a victim in the middle of the southbound lanes of Hyde Park Road,” Dease said. The officer was performing CPR.
Another victim was just south of the first, and a second police officer was just getting there to start life-saving measures.
Those two victims were Madiha Salman and Salman Afzaal.
Dease said he got out of the cruiser and saw a third victim north of where they had parked on the boulevard separating the sidewalk from Hyde Park Road.
It was an elderly woman with dark shoulder-length hair. She had serious facial injuries and was lying on her back. She had severe injuries to her abdomen and “her arms and legs both appeared to be broken,” Dease said.
It was Talat Afzaal. Olszowy checked for vital signs and began CPR. Dease’s voice broke when he described her injuries.
By then, Dease said, there were people “yelling and screaming” for him to come help a young boy who was 15 metres south of the southwest corner.
He was on his stomach on the grass, Dease said, but he was conscious. There were cuts on his hands and “he was crying and asking questions not long after I got to him.”
There was more yelling for help, this time for a fifth victim – teenager Yumnah Afzaal – who was just north of a driveway to 1420 Hyde Park Rd., four to five metres west of the sidewalk and a for-sale sign on the property.
Dease said because the boy was conscious, he left him with the civilians while he ran to the teen. She was moving her head a little, but not her extremities, Dease said. A paramedic asked Dease to grab his medical bag from the ambulance and Dease said he helped brace the teen’s neck with a firefighter and the paramedic.
After helping her, he found out CPR efforts had been stopped for Talat Afzaal. Dease said he returned to the boy, who was being helped by a paramedic. Dease said he moved civilians back to the northwest corner of the intersection, then helped get the boy on a stretcher.
It was then he noticed the tire marks in the grass, he said.
Leavoy-Costa testified she was the third cruiser to arrive at the mall parking lot and could see an officer with a man – Veltman – who was on his knees and had his hands on his head.
What caught her attention was the army-style bucket helmet he was wearing. Leavoy-Costa said she parked in front of the pickup truck in case someone else was in it and to stop it from leaving.
She said she got out of her cruiser, glanced at the two officers dealing with Veltman and then looked inside the pickup truck that had its driver’s door open and still was running. She turned off the ignition and saw a large knife, like a machete, in an orange and black sheath in the door pocket and another pocket knife in the console.
The truck’s engine was smoking, so Leavoy-Costa said she removed the keys from the ignition. She alerted the other officers to the weapons.
Veltman, she said, “was quite elevated” and “very excitable.”
“He was constantly yelling and at one point, appeared to be smiling,” she said.
He was yelling toward the cab driver who called in for assistance and then got into “a yelling match” with one of the officers, she said.
“It was a very strong tone. It was loud, drawing attention to himself,” Leavoy-Costa said, and added Veltman was “tense and jumpy.”
Leavoy-Costa is expected to continue her testimony on Friday.
jsims@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/JaneatLFPress
Nathaniel Veltman trial: Officers describe chaos at crash scene, arrest
Change in Nathaniel Veltman’s demeanor between his first and second police statements wasn’t a surprise to the officer who interviewed him.
Officers tell Veltman trial of post-collision state of pickup truck
Small samples of bright-coloured fabric were wedged into the crumpled hood of the vehicle
Author of the article:Jane Sims
Published Sep 25, 2023 • Last updated 1 day ago • 5 minute read
EDITOR’S NOTE: This story includes details that may be upsetting to readers
WINDSOR – The small swatches of bright-coloured fabric stood out in the photos of the dark-coloured pickup truck.
They were wedged into the crumpled hood. One small piece was pink. The other was green.
The jury at the Superior Court trial of Nathaniel Veltman was shown photos of his heavily damaged truck on Monday and where the small pieces of cloth were lodged in the damage above the driver’s side headlight.
Of the four Afzaal family members who died on June 6, 2021, two of the women were wearing traditional Pakistani-Muslim kameezes that were the same colour as the fabric found in the damage.
During questioning of Det.-Const. Richard Veerman, a London police forensics specialist, federal prosecutor Sarah Shaikh introduced a statement of agreed facts – evidence not disputed by either the Crown or defence – about what the Afzaals were wearing and how some of their DNA was found on the truck.
Veltman, 22, has pleaded not guilty to four counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder for the deaths of Talat Afzaal, 72, her son Salman Afzaal, 46, his wife Madiha Salman, 44, and their daughter, Yumnah, 15, on June 6, 2021. The couple’s son, who was nine years old, was seriously injured, but survived.
The family was struck by Veltman’s truck at Hyde Park and South Carriage roads in northwest London while they were on a springtime evening walk.
In the aftermath of the hit-and-run, Veltman told police he struck the family because “they were Muslim.” He said he wanted to send a message to Muslims and to inspire other young white nationalists. And he identified the Afzaals as Muslim, he said, because of what they were wearing.
The prosecution is aiming to prove the killings were planned and deliberate and were an act of white nationalist terrorism. It’s the first time Canada’s terror laws have been argued in front of a jury at a first-degree murder trial.
The trial moved to a forensics phase Monday, with two London police officers testifying to what they saw and documented at the intersection, at the arrest scene at a mall parking lot and at the secure storage facility where the truck was towed after the arrest.
The photos show the truck was heavily damaged at the front, mostly on the driver’s side. Both Veerman and Det. Const. Chris Thomas said they saw the fabric and biological evidence embedded in the front of the truck.
Thomas first spotted the scraps of cloth when he was called to document the scene at the Cherryhill Village Mall parking lot where Veltman was arrested the night the family was killed. He protected the evidence by covering the front corner of the pickup with plastic before it was towed away.
Veerman noted the pieces of cloth when he photographed the truck at a secure storage facility on June 13, 2021 after police obtained a search warrant.
Shaikh said the Crown and the defence agree the pieces of material came from clothing worn by Talat Afzaal and her daughter-in-law Madiha Salman.
Each woman was wearing a traditional Pakistani loose-fitting tunic called a kameez. Madiha Salman was wearing a bright pink, patterned kameez. Talat Afzaal’s tunic was dark green and mustard-coloured.
Madiha Salman’s husband, 46-year-old Salman Afzaal, was wearing a striped top and pants. Their 15-year-old daughter, Yumnah, was wearing a colourful print top and jeans. Their son was in jogging pants and a T-shirt.
Shaikh said DNA samples were taken from Veltman’s truck. Madiha Salman’s DNA was found on the push-bar on the front of the truck. Salman Afzaal’s DNA and his mother’s DNA were found on the hood.
The jury also was shown photos Thomas took at about 11 p.m. on June 6, 2021 at the intersection where the family was struck, a few hours after the crash. There were two rows of blue cones, put there by the London police traffic management unit.
The cones travelled to the curb at the corner of Hyde Park and South Carriage roads and continued along the sidewalk, onto the grass and then veered left toward the street.
A traffic sign in the path the cones marked was bent over.
Thomas testified he found pieces of plastic that appeared to have broken off a vehicle. Veerman told the jury he took those pieces and was able to fit them on the truck “like a puzzle piece.”
During Veerman’s testimony, Shaikh introduced another statement of agreed facts that outlined what the police seized from inside Veltman’s truck.
A serrated knife with a 15-centimetre (six-inch) blade and a black handle was located on the passenger side floor. In the centre console was an airsoft pistol that looked like a black handgun.
In the console cup-holders was a curved, bladed knife with a six-cm blade, Veltman’s driver’s licence and his CIBC bank card.
A 30-cm black machete with a curved blade inside a sheath was tucked into the driver’s door pocket.
Veerman’s testimony switched to the search of Veltman’s Covent Market Place studio apartment in downtown London. He was the first officer allowed inside once the police were granted a warrant.
That gave Veerman an untouched view of what Veltman’s apartment looked like before he left to carry out the hit-and run.
The apartment was small and messy. Notably, drawers, cupboards and even the dishwasher were open in the kitchen along with several drawers on a large dresser.
A wallet and a dustpan were on top of the chest of drawers. The bed was unmade and there was clothing strewn on and around it. The garbage can was full.
On top of a small orange table was a lid from a salsa jar, a piece of paper, a USB thumb drive and a small container of lip balm.
There was a musical keyboard beside a large dresser. An Acer laptop, a cellphone on a charger and another USB storage device were on a small computer desk beside the bed. A router was plugged in on the floor. Veerman noted there were small pieces of blue tape covering the camera function on the electronic devices.
On the round wooden kitchen table were some dirty dishes, an open lunchbox-style cooler bag and a roll of blue tape.
The defence cross-examination of Veerman continues on Tuesday.
jsims@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/JaneatLFPress
torontosun.com
Small samples of bright-coloured fabric were wedged into the crumpled hood of the vehicle
Author of the article:Jane Sims
Published Sep 25, 2023 • Last updated 1 day ago • 5 minute read
EDITOR’S NOTE: This story includes details that may be upsetting to readers
WINDSOR – The small swatches of bright-coloured fabric stood out in the photos of the dark-coloured pickup truck.
They were wedged into the crumpled hood. One small piece was pink. The other was green.
The jury at the Superior Court trial of Nathaniel Veltman was shown photos of his heavily damaged truck on Monday and where the small pieces of cloth were lodged in the damage above the driver’s side headlight.
Of the four Afzaal family members who died on June 6, 2021, two of the women were wearing traditional Pakistani-Muslim kameezes that were the same colour as the fabric found in the damage.
During questioning of Det.-Const. Richard Veerman, a London police forensics specialist, federal prosecutor Sarah Shaikh introduced a statement of agreed facts – evidence not disputed by either the Crown or defence – about what the Afzaals were wearing and how some of their DNA was found on the truck.
Veltman, 22, has pleaded not guilty to four counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder for the deaths of Talat Afzaal, 72, her son Salman Afzaal, 46, his wife Madiha Salman, 44, and their daughter, Yumnah, 15, on June 6, 2021. The couple’s son, who was nine years old, was seriously injured, but survived.
The family was struck by Veltman’s truck at Hyde Park and South Carriage roads in northwest London while they were on a springtime evening walk.
In the aftermath of the hit-and-run, Veltman told police he struck the family because “they were Muslim.” He said he wanted to send a message to Muslims and to inspire other young white nationalists. And he identified the Afzaals as Muslim, he said, because of what they were wearing.
The prosecution is aiming to prove the killings were planned and deliberate and were an act of white nationalist terrorism. It’s the first time Canada’s terror laws have been argued in front of a jury at a first-degree murder trial.
The trial moved to a forensics phase Monday, with two London police officers testifying to what they saw and documented at the intersection, at the arrest scene at a mall parking lot and at the secure storage facility where the truck was towed after the arrest.
The photos show the truck was heavily damaged at the front, mostly on the driver’s side. Both Veerman and Det. Const. Chris Thomas said they saw the fabric and biological evidence embedded in the front of the truck.
Thomas first spotted the scraps of cloth when he was called to document the scene at the Cherryhill Village Mall parking lot where Veltman was arrested the night the family was killed. He protected the evidence by covering the front corner of the pickup with plastic before it was towed away.
Veerman noted the pieces of cloth when he photographed the truck at a secure storage facility on June 13, 2021 after police obtained a search warrant.
Shaikh said the Crown and the defence agree the pieces of material came from clothing worn by Talat Afzaal and her daughter-in-law Madiha Salman.
Each woman was wearing a traditional Pakistani loose-fitting tunic called a kameez. Madiha Salman was wearing a bright pink, patterned kameez. Talat Afzaal’s tunic was dark green and mustard-coloured.
Madiha Salman’s husband, 46-year-old Salman Afzaal, was wearing a striped top and pants. Their 15-year-old daughter, Yumnah, was wearing a colourful print top and jeans. Their son was in jogging pants and a T-shirt.
Shaikh said DNA samples were taken from Veltman’s truck. Madiha Salman’s DNA was found on the push-bar on the front of the truck. Salman Afzaal’s DNA and his mother’s DNA were found on the hood.
The jury also was shown photos Thomas took at about 11 p.m. on June 6, 2021 at the intersection where the family was struck, a few hours after the crash. There were two rows of blue cones, put there by the London police traffic management unit.
The cones travelled to the curb at the corner of Hyde Park and South Carriage roads and continued along the sidewalk, onto the grass and then veered left toward the street.
A traffic sign in the path the cones marked was bent over.
Thomas testified he found pieces of plastic that appeared to have broken off a vehicle. Veerman told the jury he took those pieces and was able to fit them on the truck “like a puzzle piece.”
During Veerman’s testimony, Shaikh introduced another statement of agreed facts that outlined what the police seized from inside Veltman’s truck.
A serrated knife with a 15-centimetre (six-inch) blade and a black handle was located on the passenger side floor. In the centre console was an airsoft pistol that looked like a black handgun.
In the console cup-holders was a curved, bladed knife with a six-cm blade, Veltman’s driver’s licence and his CIBC bank card.
A 30-cm black machete with a curved blade inside a sheath was tucked into the driver’s door pocket.
Veerman’s testimony switched to the search of Veltman’s Covent Market Place studio apartment in downtown London. He was the first officer allowed inside once the police were granted a warrant.
That gave Veerman an untouched view of what Veltman’s apartment looked like before he left to carry out the hit-and run.
The apartment was small and messy. Notably, drawers, cupboards and even the dishwasher were open in the kitchen along with several drawers on a large dresser.
A wallet and a dustpan were on top of the chest of drawers. The bed was unmade and there was clothing strewn on and around it. The garbage can was full.
On top of a small orange table was a lid from a salsa jar, a piece of paper, a USB thumb drive and a small container of lip balm.
There was a musical keyboard beside a large dresser. An Acer laptop, a cellphone on a charger and another USB storage device were on a small computer desk beside the bed. A router was plugged in on the floor. Veerman noted there were small pieces of blue tape covering the camera function on the electronic devices.
On the round wooden kitchen table were some dirty dishes, an open lunchbox-style cooler bag and a roll of blue tape.
The defence cross-examination of Veerman continues on Tuesday.
jsims@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/JaneatLFPress
Veltman trial: Officers testify to post-collision state of pickup truck
The small samples of bright-coloured fabric were wedged into the crumpled hood of the dark-coloured pickup truck.
On the day of the Afzaal killings, hours of mundane tasks
They were fleeting images of Nathaniel Veltman doing what seemed mundane.
Author of the article:Jane Sims
Published Sep 26, 2023 • Last updated 15 hours ago • 5 minute read
WINDSOR – Inside Nathaniel Veltman’s apartment, in an open dresser drawer holding his passport and birth certificate, was a piece of paper with writing that made little sense.
“Canarmoire. Someone is going to town,” is what federal prosecutor Sarah Shaikh read out Tuesday after showing the paper to the jury at Veltman’s Superior Court trial.
London police investigators found it on June 12, 2021, during a search of the downtown studio unit six days after the deaths of a Muslim family in northwest London. Det. Michael Budzyn, one of the officers who helped with the search, testified to finding the note.
Shaikh and Budzyn offered no other explanation. But Tuesday afternoon, when Const. Sarah Cochrane held up the army helmet and camoflage-coloured bulletproof vest Veltman was wearing when he was arrested minutes after the hit-and-run, there was a clue what it might have meant.
Cochrane was asked to read the brand label on both pieces. “Canarmor,” she said.
Tuesday’s testimony at Veltman’s trial was a diverse mixture of evidence that included the identification of items found during the search of his Covent Market Place apartment, videos of Veltman’s movements inside the building before the Afzaal family was hit by Veltman’s pickup truck and the testimony of Cochrane, the officer who arrested Veltman in the Cherryhill Village Mall parking lot minutes later.
Veltman, 22, has pleaded not guilty to four counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder for the hit-and-run of a London family out for a springtime walk on June 6, 2021.
Killed were Talat Afzaal, 72, her son Salman Afzaal, 46, his wife Madiha Salman, 44, and their daughter Yumnah, 15. The son, who was nine at the time, was severely injured, but survived.
The jury has already heard Veltman told London police after his arrest he intentionally hit the family “because they were Muslim” and had identified them by what they were wearing. His goal, he told an investigator during an extensive police interview, was to “send a message” to Muslims – specifically what he called “Muslim grooming gangs” in the United Kingdom and to inspire other white nationalists.
The prosecution is aiming to prove the killings were planned and deliberate and that they were carried out as an act of terrorism. It’s the first time Canada’s terrorism laws are being argued in front of a jury at a first-degree murder trial.
Cochrane, who had been on the police force for two years when she was confronted with Veltman, testified she was in her cruiser at London police headquarters when the radio calls started at 8:42 p.m. about the incident at Hyde Park and South Carriage roads.
She said she was heading in that direction when updated information came in that led her to turn north onto Woodward Avenue from Riverside Drive and toward Cherryhill Village Mall.
Cochrane said she turned left onto Oxford Street when she could see a cab driver waving her over and “a person I now know to be Mr. Veltman” standing with his hands on his head. Over the next 12 minutes and 31 seconds, Cochrane arrested Veltman for dangerous operation of a motor vehicle, re-arrested him for attempted murder and re-arrested him again for first-degree murder.
She called it “an extremely busy, dynamic, unique situation” with more officers arriving on the scene while the arrest continued.
In the seconds it took for her to drive into parking lot, Veltman, wearing a black jacket, black pants, steel-toed boots and the green army helmet, was on his knees, still with his hands on his head.
Cochrane said she ordered him to his stomach with his arms stretched out in a T-position. She grabbed his right arm and put her knee on his lower back. Another officer who had raced to the scene behind her grabbed Veltman’s other arm and Cochrane handcuffed him.
Veltman was led to her cruiser, where he was searched and the officers discovered Veltman was wearing the bulletproof vest, which they removed. She noted he was wearing a white T-shirt with spray-painted black crosses on the front and back.
Veltman was placed in the back of Cochrane’s cruiser, where he sat with his shoulders back. “He seemed happy, he was smiling, he was looking around. He didn’t appear upset,” she said.
From where he sat behind the driver’s seat, Veltman moved his arms around to show his hands to Cochrane and made an “OK” symbol, she said. Through questions from assistant Crown attorney Jennifer Moser, she said Veltman was talking, but was cautioned by the Crown not to quote him.
The jury also saw seven video clips taken from the apartment building surveillance system, showing Veltman leaving his apartment the morning of June 6, 2021 with an armful of books and a window screen that he took to the garbage room before leaving.
He returned later that day and was seen on video leaving his second-floor apartment, turning back and leaving again at 7:58 p.m. – about 45 minutes before the Afzaals were struck by his truck.
The jury saw more photos of Veltman’s messy apartment. Det. Const. Richard Veerman identified a large beige bible and a 2012 Ontario Building Code binder sitting in an overflowing garbage can.
Budzyn testified he seized the extra set of keys for Veltman’s truck from the large dresser and the wallet from on top of the chest that contained Veltman’s health card and Fanshawe College student card.
He also identified items on the kitchen table that included a roll of blue tape similar to tape that had been placed over the cameras of a laptop and cellphone, and some dirty dishes, and another handwritten note.
Written were three columns of numbers, the first with speeds in both kilometres and miles per hour, followed by percentages. The speeds ranged from 35 kilometres/hour to 65k/h and percentages form five per cent to 85 per cent.
Under the numbers was written, “+++ even more.”
The defence cross-examination of Cochrane is expected on Wednesday morning.
jsims@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/JaneatLFPress
torontosun.com
They were fleeting images of Nathaniel Veltman doing what seemed mundane.
Author of the article:Jane Sims
Published Sep 26, 2023 • Last updated 15 hours ago • 5 minute read
WINDSOR – Inside Nathaniel Veltman’s apartment, in an open dresser drawer holding his passport and birth certificate, was a piece of paper with writing that made little sense.
“Canarmoire. Someone is going to town,” is what federal prosecutor Sarah Shaikh read out Tuesday after showing the paper to the jury at Veltman’s Superior Court trial.
London police investigators found it on June 12, 2021, during a search of the downtown studio unit six days after the deaths of a Muslim family in northwest London. Det. Michael Budzyn, one of the officers who helped with the search, testified to finding the note.
Shaikh and Budzyn offered no other explanation. But Tuesday afternoon, when Const. Sarah Cochrane held up the army helmet and camoflage-coloured bulletproof vest Veltman was wearing when he was arrested minutes after the hit-and-run, there was a clue what it might have meant.
Cochrane was asked to read the brand label on both pieces. “Canarmor,” she said.
Tuesday’s testimony at Veltman’s trial was a diverse mixture of evidence that included the identification of items found during the search of his Covent Market Place apartment, videos of Veltman’s movements inside the building before the Afzaal family was hit by Veltman’s pickup truck and the testimony of Cochrane, the officer who arrested Veltman in the Cherryhill Village Mall parking lot minutes later.
Veltman, 22, has pleaded not guilty to four counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder for the hit-and-run of a London family out for a springtime walk on June 6, 2021.
Killed were Talat Afzaal, 72, her son Salman Afzaal, 46, his wife Madiha Salman, 44, and their daughter Yumnah, 15. The son, who was nine at the time, was severely injured, but survived.
The jury has already heard Veltman told London police after his arrest he intentionally hit the family “because they were Muslim” and had identified them by what they were wearing. His goal, he told an investigator during an extensive police interview, was to “send a message” to Muslims – specifically what he called “Muslim grooming gangs” in the United Kingdom and to inspire other white nationalists.
The prosecution is aiming to prove the killings were planned and deliberate and that they were carried out as an act of terrorism. It’s the first time Canada’s terrorism laws are being argued in front of a jury at a first-degree murder trial.
Cochrane, who had been on the police force for two years when she was confronted with Veltman, testified she was in her cruiser at London police headquarters when the radio calls started at 8:42 p.m. about the incident at Hyde Park and South Carriage roads.
She said she was heading in that direction when updated information came in that led her to turn north onto Woodward Avenue from Riverside Drive and toward Cherryhill Village Mall.
Cochrane said she turned left onto Oxford Street when she could see a cab driver waving her over and “a person I now know to be Mr. Veltman” standing with his hands on his head. Over the next 12 minutes and 31 seconds, Cochrane arrested Veltman for dangerous operation of a motor vehicle, re-arrested him for attempted murder and re-arrested him again for first-degree murder.
She called it “an extremely busy, dynamic, unique situation” with more officers arriving on the scene while the arrest continued.
In the seconds it took for her to drive into parking lot, Veltman, wearing a black jacket, black pants, steel-toed boots and the green army helmet, was on his knees, still with his hands on his head.
Cochrane said she ordered him to his stomach with his arms stretched out in a T-position. She grabbed his right arm and put her knee on his lower back. Another officer who had raced to the scene behind her grabbed Veltman’s other arm and Cochrane handcuffed him.
Veltman was led to her cruiser, where he was searched and the officers discovered Veltman was wearing the bulletproof vest, which they removed. She noted he was wearing a white T-shirt with spray-painted black crosses on the front and back.
Veltman was placed in the back of Cochrane’s cruiser, where he sat with his shoulders back. “He seemed happy, he was smiling, he was looking around. He didn’t appear upset,” she said.
From where he sat behind the driver’s seat, Veltman moved his arms around to show his hands to Cochrane and made an “OK” symbol, she said. Through questions from assistant Crown attorney Jennifer Moser, she said Veltman was talking, but was cautioned by the Crown not to quote him.
The jury also saw seven video clips taken from the apartment building surveillance system, showing Veltman leaving his apartment the morning of June 6, 2021 with an armful of books and a window screen that he took to the garbage room before leaving.
He returned later that day and was seen on video leaving his second-floor apartment, turning back and leaving again at 7:58 p.m. – about 45 minutes before the Afzaals were struck by his truck.
The jury saw more photos of Veltman’s messy apartment. Det. Const. Richard Veerman identified a large beige bible and a 2012 Ontario Building Code binder sitting in an overflowing garbage can.
Budzyn testified he seized the extra set of keys for Veltman’s truck from the large dresser and the wallet from on top of the chest that contained Veltman’s health card and Fanshawe College student card.
He also identified items on the kitchen table that included a roll of blue tape similar to tape that had been placed over the cameras of a laptop and cellphone, and some dirty dishes, and another handwritten note.
Written were three columns of numbers, the first with speeds in both kilometres and miles per hour, followed by percentages. The speeds ranged from 35 kilometres/hour to 65k/h and percentages form five per cent to 85 per cent.
Under the numbers was written, “+++ even more.”
The defence cross-examination of Cochrane is expected on Wednesday morning.
jsims@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/JaneatLFPress
Veltman trial: Jury sees odd note, hears arresting officer's testimony
The jury at Nathaniel Veltman's murder trial saw seven short videos gleaned from his apartment building security system on June 6, 2021
Officers describe seizing devices, extracting data
The focus for the jury shifted from what he told the police to what he was looking at online
Author of the article:Jane Sims
Published Sep 28, 2023 • Last updated 1 day ago • 4 minute read
WINDSOR – The focus for the jury at Nathaniel Veltman’s murder trial shifted from what he told the police to what he was looking at online.
On Thursday, two London police officers testified to extracting data from Veltman’s cellphone, laptop and other digital storage devices.
All the devices were found in Veltman’s studio apartment in downtown London during a police search on June 12, 2021, six days after Veltman slammed his pickup truck into a London Muslim family out for a spring walk.
Veltman, 22, has pleaded not guilty to four counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder for the hit-and-run killings of four family members and the injury to a then nine-year-old boy on June 6, 2021.
The prosecution is arguing the deaths were planned and deliberate acts and were also acts of terror. It’s the first time Canada’s terrorism laws, passed into law in the wake of 9/11 more than two decades ago, have been argued in front of a jury in a first-degree murder case.
Killed were Talat Afzaal, 72, her son Salman Afzaal, 46, his wife Madiha Salman, 44, and their daughter Yumnah Afzaal, 15. All of them died of multiple trauma from being struck by the 2016 Dodge Ram pickup truck.
The trial, which began on Sept. 11, has focused on Veltman’s motivation for carrying out the hit-and-run. The jury has seen Veltman confess in two videotaped police interviews where he told London police Det. Micah Bourdeau he had intentionally struck the family standing at a busy northwest London intersection because “they were Muslim.”
He also told Bourdeau he had “done my own research,” declared himself to be a white nationalist and wanted “to send a message” to what he described as “Muslim grooming gangs” in the United Kingdom that he said were trafficking young white girls.
And, Veltman said in the interviews, he wanted to be an inspiration to other young white nationalists contemplating similar attacks, just as he had been inspired by others.
London police Det. Const. Michael Comeau testified Thursday he was part of the team of officers who searched Veltman’s Covent Market Place studio apartment on June 12, 2021.
Comeau described seeing a Samsung Galaxy phone on a wireless charger along with a laptop and a thumb drive sitting on a computer desk in the apartment.
He said, through questions from federal prosecutor Sarah Shaikh, that he took the phone to London police headquarters where he used specialized software to extract the data from it.
On July 2, 2021, he was given an external hard drive and two thumb drives found during the search, including the one he saw sitting near the cellphone. Comeau said he used the same process to extract data from them.
The jury also heard from London police Sgt. Jason Eddy, who supervises the digital forensics unit. He said he went into the apartment the same time as Comeau and identified digital devices.
Eddy said the apartment was “sparsely furnished” and somewhat messy. He said he saw the Acer Aspire 7 laptop, the cellphone on the wireless charger and a thumb drive on the desk and another thumb drive on a small orange table.
The laptop was powered up when the officers found it and password protected. The user name was “Nate.”
A portable hard drive was discovered in one of the open drawers with Veltman’s passport and birth certificate.
Eddy said he seized the laptop, keeping the screen open to ensure the power stayed on, and took it back to the police digital forensic lab where he extracted the data that night.
Defence lawyer Christopher Hicks, during cross-examination, wanted to know if the police were able to access all of the data.
Eddy’s explanation was complicated, but said there were several tools the police can use to get into a computer. However, the first step is to try any known passwords. One password forwarded to him by an investigator was Stupid123123. That password didn’t work and the police had to use other means to access the data. Eddy said they were successful.
Eddy said he also located a paper folder during the apartment search that contained all the documents related to the purchase of the pickup truck. The sale was on May 11, 2021, and it was delivered on May 19, 2021.
The South West Auto Group folder included a bank loan agreement and the bill of sale. Hicks zeroed in on the sales bill that showed that the price with taxes was $27,322.37.
The selling price was $21,995 and Veltman had purchased a 12-month extended warranty for $1,654.
The sales bill showed Veltman put $2,000 down and had a bank loan agreement for bi-weekly payments.
Veltman negotiated a 72-month car loan with TD Bank at 12.49 per cent interest, the document said. The sales bill also projected the total cost of the truck once Veltman made 154 bi-weekly payments of $231.89 would be $36,174.44.
Before the two police officers testified Thursday, Superior Court Justice Renee Pomerance told the jury it isn’t required again until Tuesday. Monday already had been set aside to mark the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.
The break, she said, won’t delay the estimated length of the trial, which is eight weeks, and she assured the jury that they are “ahead of schedule.”
She also gave a lengthy reminder to the 14 jurors that it is “critical” they are not to discuss the case with anyone, including family, friends and colleagues and to disregard any outside information about the case.
The trial continues on Tuesday.
jsims@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/JaneatLFPress
torontosun.com
The focus for the jury shifted from what he told the police to what he was looking at online
Author of the article:Jane Sims
Published Sep 28, 2023 • Last updated 1 day ago • 4 minute read
WINDSOR – The focus for the jury at Nathaniel Veltman’s murder trial shifted from what he told the police to what he was looking at online.
On Thursday, two London police officers testified to extracting data from Veltman’s cellphone, laptop and other digital storage devices.
All the devices were found in Veltman’s studio apartment in downtown London during a police search on June 12, 2021, six days after Veltman slammed his pickup truck into a London Muslim family out for a spring walk.
Veltman, 22, has pleaded not guilty to four counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder for the hit-and-run killings of four family members and the injury to a then nine-year-old boy on June 6, 2021.
The prosecution is arguing the deaths were planned and deliberate acts and were also acts of terror. It’s the first time Canada’s terrorism laws, passed into law in the wake of 9/11 more than two decades ago, have been argued in front of a jury in a first-degree murder case.
Killed were Talat Afzaal, 72, her son Salman Afzaal, 46, his wife Madiha Salman, 44, and their daughter Yumnah Afzaal, 15. All of them died of multiple trauma from being struck by the 2016 Dodge Ram pickup truck.
The trial, which began on Sept. 11, has focused on Veltman’s motivation for carrying out the hit-and-run. The jury has seen Veltman confess in two videotaped police interviews where he told London police Det. Micah Bourdeau he had intentionally struck the family standing at a busy northwest London intersection because “they were Muslim.”
He also told Bourdeau he had “done my own research,” declared himself to be a white nationalist and wanted “to send a message” to what he described as “Muslim grooming gangs” in the United Kingdom that he said were trafficking young white girls.
And, Veltman said in the interviews, he wanted to be an inspiration to other young white nationalists contemplating similar attacks, just as he had been inspired by others.
London police Det. Const. Michael Comeau testified Thursday he was part of the team of officers who searched Veltman’s Covent Market Place studio apartment on June 12, 2021.
Comeau described seeing a Samsung Galaxy phone on a wireless charger along with a laptop and a thumb drive sitting on a computer desk in the apartment.
He said, through questions from federal prosecutor Sarah Shaikh, that he took the phone to London police headquarters where he used specialized software to extract the data from it.
On July 2, 2021, he was given an external hard drive and two thumb drives found during the search, including the one he saw sitting near the cellphone. Comeau said he used the same process to extract data from them.
The jury also heard from London police Sgt. Jason Eddy, who supervises the digital forensics unit. He said he went into the apartment the same time as Comeau and identified digital devices.
Eddy said the apartment was “sparsely furnished” and somewhat messy. He said he saw the Acer Aspire 7 laptop, the cellphone on the wireless charger and a thumb drive on the desk and another thumb drive on a small orange table.
The laptop was powered up when the officers found it and password protected. The user name was “Nate.”
A portable hard drive was discovered in one of the open drawers with Veltman’s passport and birth certificate.
Eddy said he seized the laptop, keeping the screen open to ensure the power stayed on, and took it back to the police digital forensic lab where he extracted the data that night.
Defence lawyer Christopher Hicks, during cross-examination, wanted to know if the police were able to access all of the data.
Eddy’s explanation was complicated, but said there were several tools the police can use to get into a computer. However, the first step is to try any known passwords. One password forwarded to him by an investigator was Stupid123123. That password didn’t work and the police had to use other means to access the data. Eddy said they were successful.
Eddy said he also located a paper folder during the apartment search that contained all the documents related to the purchase of the pickup truck. The sale was on May 11, 2021, and it was delivered on May 19, 2021.
The South West Auto Group folder included a bank loan agreement and the bill of sale. Hicks zeroed in on the sales bill that showed that the price with taxes was $27,322.37.
The selling price was $21,995 and Veltman had purchased a 12-month extended warranty for $1,654.
The sales bill showed Veltman put $2,000 down and had a bank loan agreement for bi-weekly payments.
Veltman negotiated a 72-month car loan with TD Bank at 12.49 per cent interest, the document said. The sales bill also projected the total cost of the truck once Veltman made 154 bi-weekly payments of $231.89 would be $36,174.44.
Before the two police officers testified Thursday, Superior Court Justice Renee Pomerance told the jury it isn’t required again until Tuesday. Monday already had been set aside to mark the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.
The break, she said, won’t delay the estimated length of the trial, which is eight weeks, and she assured the jury that they are “ahead of schedule.”
She also gave a lengthy reminder to the 14 jurors that it is “critical” they are not to discuss the case with anyone, including family, friends and colleagues and to disregard any outside information about the case.
The trial continues on Tuesday.
jsims@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/JaneatLFPress
Nathaniel Veltman trial: Officers describe seizing devices, extracting data
WINDSOR — The focus for the jury at Nathaniel Veltman’s murder trial shifted from what he told the police to what he was looking at online.
In manifesto, Nathaniel Veltman called for 'violent revolution'
WINDSOR – He wanted a “violent revolution.”
Author of the article:Jane Sims
Published Oct 04, 2023 • Last updated 1 day ago • 5 minute read
WINDSOR – Nathaniel Veltman sang the praises of white nationalism and wrote that “violent revolutions” were the only answer.
“I am pretty confident that I have a far greater grasp of the truth of what is happening to white people, and why it is happening than the average person,” he wrote in the opening lines of A White Awakening, his rambling, racist, hate-filled manifesto.
“European-founded countries have had countless violent revolutions. Why can’t we have one again?”
For 10 minutes Wednesday, the jury at Veltman’s Superior Court trial listened to federal prosecutor Sarah Shaikh read excerpts from the document found on Veltman’s electronic devices that heralded white nationalism, spewed hatred toward Muslims and envisioned a “new society” devoid of multiculturalism and “not controlled by foreign lobbying globalist companies and corporatists.”
Evidence of the manifesto first appeared on an external hard drive on May 4, 2021, a month before Veltman would drive his pickup truck into a Pakistani-Muslim family out for a springtime walk in northwest London on June 6, 2021.
Killed were Talat Afzaal, 72, her son Salman Afzaal, 46, his wife Madiha Salman, 44, and their daughter Yumnah, 15. All four died of multiple trauma after they were struck at the corner of Hyde Park and South Carriage roads on June 6, 2021. A boy, then nine, was seriously injured, but survived.
Veltman, 22, has pleaded not guilty to four counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder. The jury already has heard and seen a videotaped confession by Veltman to a London police officer hours after the family was run down and killed, where he said he randomly targeted the family “because they were Muslim.”
The prosecution is aiming to prove the killings were not just planned and deliberate but were acts of terror by a white nationalist. It’s the first time Canada’s terror laws are being tested in front of a jury at a first-degree murder trial.
The arguments about terrorism appear to be based not only on what Veltman said, but what he was doing on his electronic devices.
Windsor police Sgt. Liyu Guan, qualified as an expert in digital forensic examinations, began his testimony on Tuesday describing how he was asked in March 2023 by London police to review data sets from an Acer laptop, a Kingston thumb drive, a Lexar thumb drive, a Seagate external hard drive and a Samsung cellphone.
He found a number of documents, videos and photos, including information surrounding Veltman ordering a bullet-proof vest, his resume and his Fanshawe College assignments.
His analysis pointed to Veltman working on his own manifesto from May 4, 2021, when he first created the computer file, and reopening and increasing the size of the document up until June 5, 2021, the day before the Afzaals were killed.
But Veltman’s interest in white nationalist activities appears to have started months earlier. In a timeline Guan created based on the information he found stored on the devices, a video of the 1991 shootings at two Christchurch mosques, where 51 people were killed, was downloaded onto the laptop and copied onto a thumb drive on Feb. 15, 2021.
At the same time, a copy of The Great Replacement, the white nationalist manifesto written by the convicted Christchurch murderer Brenton Tarrant was downloaded and saved.
Veltman said during his police interview that Tarrant was his main inspiration for the London attack.
Guan said the shooting video was opened 17 times and Tarrant’s manifesto had been opened 12 times before June 6, 2021. The files were renamed on the USB sticks.
On April 16, 2021, the manifesto written by Anders Breivik, the convicted mass murderer responsible for killing 77 people in Norway in 2011, including 69 young people at a summer camp, was downloaded onto Veltman’s cellphone.
On May 5, 2021, a day after opening a file to start his own manifesto, it appears Veltman downloaded and copied another video of a shooting of two people.
But what was intriguing in the timeline was the time spent on A White Awakening, a document that appears to have been worked on extensively June 1, 2021.
When Shaikh was reading the excerpts of the manifesto, she would pause to tell the jury when there were spelling mistakes or if a phrase had been written in upper case lettering.
One such phrase came after a vicious description of Muslims, where Veltman suggested they were responbsible for “brutal terrorism against Europe”, for “grooming gangs” and violence against white people.
“We must make life very uncomfortable for these people until they are driven out of our countries, fast,” Veltman wrote in all capital letters.
He envisioned a white world where “young white guys and girls will no longer be living in despair,” committing suicide and “living in depression” because they will have “an actual rich and happy culture to engage in and be a part of tight-knit, healthy, communities.”
He declared he is “a Christian” and called on white people to “collectively resist” what he called “anti-white scourges.”
He wrote that “European people worldwide will go through hell before we free ourselves from these wretched tyrannical powers.”
“Those of us who are aware of how dire our situation is will bravely and courageously show the way forward for those who aren’t,” he wrote.
He ended the manifesto with “Europa arises!”
Shaikh noted during her questioning of Guan that Tarrant’s manifesto ended with the phrase “Europa Rises.”
Guan’s timeline also gave a hint to what Veltman was doing just before he left his apartment on June 6, 2021, and attacked the Afzaal family.
At 7:37 p.m., he was using his Gmail email account on his laptop. He opened the USB that stored his manifesto. He removed that thumb drive and opened his other thumb drive storing Tarrant’s manifesto.
That thumb drive remained in his laptop until 7:50 p.m.
Less than an hour later, just before 8:45 p.m., the Afzaals were struck by Veltman’s speeding pickup truck.
The trial continues on Thursday.
jsims@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/JaneatLFPress
torontosun.com
WINDSOR – He wanted a “violent revolution.”
Author of the article:Jane Sims
Published Oct 04, 2023 • Last updated 1 day ago • 5 minute read
WINDSOR – Nathaniel Veltman sang the praises of white nationalism and wrote that “violent revolutions” were the only answer.
“I am pretty confident that I have a far greater grasp of the truth of what is happening to white people, and why it is happening than the average person,” he wrote in the opening lines of A White Awakening, his rambling, racist, hate-filled manifesto.
“European-founded countries have had countless violent revolutions. Why can’t we have one again?”
For 10 minutes Wednesday, the jury at Veltman’s Superior Court trial listened to federal prosecutor Sarah Shaikh read excerpts from the document found on Veltman’s electronic devices that heralded white nationalism, spewed hatred toward Muslims and envisioned a “new society” devoid of multiculturalism and “not controlled by foreign lobbying globalist companies and corporatists.”
Evidence of the manifesto first appeared on an external hard drive on May 4, 2021, a month before Veltman would drive his pickup truck into a Pakistani-Muslim family out for a springtime walk in northwest London on June 6, 2021.
Killed were Talat Afzaal, 72, her son Salman Afzaal, 46, his wife Madiha Salman, 44, and their daughter Yumnah, 15. All four died of multiple trauma after they were struck at the corner of Hyde Park and South Carriage roads on June 6, 2021. A boy, then nine, was seriously injured, but survived.
Veltman, 22, has pleaded not guilty to four counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder. The jury already has heard and seen a videotaped confession by Veltman to a London police officer hours after the family was run down and killed, where he said he randomly targeted the family “because they were Muslim.”
The prosecution is aiming to prove the killings were not just planned and deliberate but were acts of terror by a white nationalist. It’s the first time Canada’s terror laws are being tested in front of a jury at a first-degree murder trial.
The arguments about terrorism appear to be based not only on what Veltman said, but what he was doing on his electronic devices.
Windsor police Sgt. Liyu Guan, qualified as an expert in digital forensic examinations, began his testimony on Tuesday describing how he was asked in March 2023 by London police to review data sets from an Acer laptop, a Kingston thumb drive, a Lexar thumb drive, a Seagate external hard drive and a Samsung cellphone.
He found a number of documents, videos and photos, including information surrounding Veltman ordering a bullet-proof vest, his resume and his Fanshawe College assignments.
His analysis pointed to Veltman working on his own manifesto from May 4, 2021, when he first created the computer file, and reopening and increasing the size of the document up until June 5, 2021, the day before the Afzaals were killed.
But Veltman’s interest in white nationalist activities appears to have started months earlier. In a timeline Guan created based on the information he found stored on the devices, a video of the 1991 shootings at two Christchurch mosques, where 51 people were killed, was downloaded onto the laptop and copied onto a thumb drive on Feb. 15, 2021.
At the same time, a copy of The Great Replacement, the white nationalist manifesto written by the convicted Christchurch murderer Brenton Tarrant was downloaded and saved.
Veltman said during his police interview that Tarrant was his main inspiration for the London attack.
Guan said the shooting video was opened 17 times and Tarrant’s manifesto had been opened 12 times before June 6, 2021. The files were renamed on the USB sticks.
On April 16, 2021, the manifesto written by Anders Breivik, the convicted mass murderer responsible for killing 77 people in Norway in 2011, including 69 young people at a summer camp, was downloaded onto Veltman’s cellphone.
On May 5, 2021, a day after opening a file to start his own manifesto, it appears Veltman downloaded and copied another video of a shooting of two people.
But what was intriguing in the timeline was the time spent on A White Awakening, a document that appears to have been worked on extensively June 1, 2021.
When Shaikh was reading the excerpts of the manifesto, she would pause to tell the jury when there were spelling mistakes or if a phrase had been written in upper case lettering.
One such phrase came after a vicious description of Muslims, where Veltman suggested they were responbsible for “brutal terrorism against Europe”, for “grooming gangs” and violence against white people.
“We must make life very uncomfortable for these people until they are driven out of our countries, fast,” Veltman wrote in all capital letters.
He envisioned a white world where “young white guys and girls will no longer be living in despair,” committing suicide and “living in depression” because they will have “an actual rich and happy culture to engage in and be a part of tight-knit, healthy, communities.”
He declared he is “a Christian” and called on white people to “collectively resist” what he called “anti-white scourges.”
He wrote that “European people worldwide will go through hell before we free ourselves from these wretched tyrannical powers.”
“Those of us who are aware of how dire our situation is will bravely and courageously show the way forward for those who aren’t,” he wrote.
He ended the manifesto with “Europa arises!”
Shaikh noted during her questioning of Guan that Tarrant’s manifesto ended with the phrase “Europa Rises.”
Guan’s timeline also gave a hint to what Veltman was doing just before he left his apartment on June 6, 2021, and attacked the Afzaal family.
At 7:37 p.m., he was using his Gmail email account on his laptop. He opened the USB that stored his manifesto. He removed that thumb drive and opened his other thumb drive storing Tarrant’s manifesto.
That thumb drive remained in his laptop until 7:50 p.m.
Less than an hour later, just before 8:45 p.m., the Afzaals were struck by Veltman’s speeding pickup truck.
The trial continues on Thursday.
jsims@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/JaneatLFPress
In manifesto, Nathaniel Veltman called for 'violent revolution'
Nathaniel Veltman praised white nationalism and wrote “violent revolutions” were necessary in a manifesto found on his electronic devices
Crown in Nathaniel Veltman trial closes case after calling 19 witnesses
The hit-and-run crash killed four members of a Pakistani-Muslim family in London, Ont.
Author of the article:Jane Sims
Published Oct 05, 2023 • 4 minute read
Jurors at the trial of the man accused of murdering four members of a Muslim family in Ontario are set to see more footage today of him at a police station after his arrest. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Alexandra Newbould)
Jurors at the trial of the man accused of murdering four members of a Muslim family in Ontario are set to see more footage today of him at a police station after his arrest. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Alexandra Newbould)
WINDSOR – After almost a month of evidence, the prosecution closed its case Thursday at the trial of a London man accused of murder and white nationalist terrorism in the hit-and-run crash that killed four members of a Pakistani-Muslim family.
Federal prosecutor Sarah Shaikh announced to the jury that the Crown won’t be calling any more evidence at the Superior Court trial of Nathaniel Veltman, 22, who has pleaded not guilty to four counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder.
Four members of the Afzaal family – Talat Afzaal, 72, her son Salman Afzaal, 46, his wife Madiha Salman, 44, and their daughter Yumnah Afzaal, 15 – were killed at a northwest London intersection when they were struck by Veltman’s 2016 dark-coloured Dodge Ram pickup truck on June 6, 2021. A boy, who was nine at the time, was severely injured, but survived.
The prosecution said from the outset it aims to prove the killings were both planned and deliberate and that they were acts of terrorism. This is the first time Canada’s terrorism laws that were passed two decades ago have been tested in front of a jury at a first-degree murder trial.
The jury of 14 people was chosen on Sept. 5 and began hearing evidence on Sept. 11. Nineteen people have testified, including several London police officers.
The jury has heard evidence that Veltman was heading north on Hyde Park Road shortly before 8:45 p.m., made a U-turn, sped up and jumped the curb at South Carriage Road to hit the family before taking off. Veltman was arrested at the Cherryhill Village Mall parking lot minutes after the hit-and-run outside his heavily damaged truck, wearing an army helmet and a bullet-proof vest.
One of the officers, Det. Micah Bourdeau, conducted two interviews with Veltman within hours of his arrest. The jury saw what amounted to a confession where Veltman not only admitted he struck the family, he said he was a white nationalist and did it “because they were Muslim.”
There have been more than 30 exhibits entered into the record. The jury saw hours of video evidence, and scores of police photographs of the crash scene, the arrest scene, Veltman’s truck and his downtown London apartment.
There were also nine agreed statements of fact – agreements made between the Crown and the defence admitting various parts of the evidence. One of the agreements admitted that the four Afzaals died of multiple trauma.
The defence also conceded that Veltman was driving the truck and that he had the accelerator depressed to the floor four seconds before striking the family. The brakes were never applied.
A forensic examination of Veltman’s electronic devices found in his apartment revealed that Veltman had downloaded videos of mass shootings and the manifestos of two white nationalist mass murderers, including the writings of Brenton Tarrant, who killed 51 people in 1991 at two Christchurch, New Zealand, mosques.
Veltman told Bourdeau that Tarrant was one of his inspirations and he wanted to be an inspiration, too. He also said he “wanted to send a message” to what he described as “Muslim grooming gangs” in the United Kingdom.
Those sentiments were laid out in Veltman’s own manifesto that was found stored in his electronic devices. The rambling writing which he titled “A WHITE Awakening” called for “violent revolutions” against non-white people and a “new society” for “European people.”
The analysis of the electronics suggested that Tarrant’s manifesto was opened on Veltman’s laptop an hour before the Afzaals were killed.
The jury was only needed for about an hour on Thursday to watch more security videos of Veltman at his apartment building. There had been video clips shown in court already recorded during the afternoon and evening of June 6, 2021.
The videos shown on Thursday were recorded starting at 3:39 a.m. on June 5, 2021 – the day before the hit-and-run – and up until 2:02 a.m. on June 6, 2021.
They showed Veltman coming and going from the building three times, sometimes checking his mailbox on the way to the stairwell.
Other videos were recorded in the early morning hours of June 6, 2021. Veltman was seen moving items from the second floor apartment to the main floor garbage room starting at 1:37 a.m. Twice, he took several cardboard boxes to the garbage, and in one instance he carried a large wooden pallet to the trash.
Shaikh described Veltman’s activity at 2:02 a.m. when he carried a garbage bag and “an item” to the trash room. The jury saw video of Veltman leaving the garbage room and heading back to his apartment a minute later.
Superior Court Justice Renee Pomerance excused the jury until Tuesday morning at 10 a.m.
jsims@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/JaneatLFPress
torontosun.com
The hit-and-run crash killed four members of a Pakistani-Muslim family in London, Ont.
Author of the article:Jane Sims
Published Oct 05, 2023 • 4 minute read
Jurors at the trial of the man accused of murdering four members of a Muslim family in Ontario are set to see more footage today of him at a police station after his arrest. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Alexandra Newbould)
Jurors at the trial of the man accused of murdering four members of a Muslim family in Ontario are set to see more footage today of him at a police station after his arrest. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Alexandra Newbould)
WINDSOR – After almost a month of evidence, the prosecution closed its case Thursday at the trial of a London man accused of murder and white nationalist terrorism in the hit-and-run crash that killed four members of a Pakistani-Muslim family.
Federal prosecutor Sarah Shaikh announced to the jury that the Crown won’t be calling any more evidence at the Superior Court trial of Nathaniel Veltman, 22, who has pleaded not guilty to four counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder.
Four members of the Afzaal family – Talat Afzaal, 72, her son Salman Afzaal, 46, his wife Madiha Salman, 44, and their daughter Yumnah Afzaal, 15 – were killed at a northwest London intersection when they were struck by Veltman’s 2016 dark-coloured Dodge Ram pickup truck on June 6, 2021. A boy, who was nine at the time, was severely injured, but survived.
The prosecution said from the outset it aims to prove the killings were both planned and deliberate and that they were acts of terrorism. This is the first time Canada’s terrorism laws that were passed two decades ago have been tested in front of a jury at a first-degree murder trial.
The jury of 14 people was chosen on Sept. 5 and began hearing evidence on Sept. 11. Nineteen people have testified, including several London police officers.
The jury has heard evidence that Veltman was heading north on Hyde Park Road shortly before 8:45 p.m., made a U-turn, sped up and jumped the curb at South Carriage Road to hit the family before taking off. Veltman was arrested at the Cherryhill Village Mall parking lot minutes after the hit-and-run outside his heavily damaged truck, wearing an army helmet and a bullet-proof vest.
One of the officers, Det. Micah Bourdeau, conducted two interviews with Veltman within hours of his arrest. The jury saw what amounted to a confession where Veltman not only admitted he struck the family, he said he was a white nationalist and did it “because they were Muslim.”
There have been more than 30 exhibits entered into the record. The jury saw hours of video evidence, and scores of police photographs of the crash scene, the arrest scene, Veltman’s truck and his downtown London apartment.
There were also nine agreed statements of fact – agreements made between the Crown and the defence admitting various parts of the evidence. One of the agreements admitted that the four Afzaals died of multiple trauma.
The defence also conceded that Veltman was driving the truck and that he had the accelerator depressed to the floor four seconds before striking the family. The brakes were never applied.
A forensic examination of Veltman’s electronic devices found in his apartment revealed that Veltman had downloaded videos of mass shootings and the manifestos of two white nationalist mass murderers, including the writings of Brenton Tarrant, who killed 51 people in 1991 at two Christchurch, New Zealand, mosques.
Veltman told Bourdeau that Tarrant was one of his inspirations and he wanted to be an inspiration, too. He also said he “wanted to send a message” to what he described as “Muslim grooming gangs” in the United Kingdom.
Those sentiments were laid out in Veltman’s own manifesto that was found stored in his electronic devices. The rambling writing which he titled “A WHITE Awakening” called for “violent revolutions” against non-white people and a “new society” for “European people.”
The analysis of the electronics suggested that Tarrant’s manifesto was opened on Veltman’s laptop an hour before the Afzaals were killed.
The jury was only needed for about an hour on Thursday to watch more security videos of Veltman at his apartment building. There had been video clips shown in court already recorded during the afternoon and evening of June 6, 2021.
The videos shown on Thursday were recorded starting at 3:39 a.m. on June 5, 2021 – the day before the hit-and-run – and up until 2:02 a.m. on June 6, 2021.
They showed Veltman coming and going from the building three times, sometimes checking his mailbox on the way to the stairwell.
Other videos were recorded in the early morning hours of June 6, 2021. Veltman was seen moving items from the second floor apartment to the main floor garbage room starting at 1:37 a.m. Twice, he took several cardboard boxes to the garbage, and in one instance he carried a large wooden pallet to the trash.
Shaikh described Veltman’s activity at 2:02 a.m. when he carried a garbage bag and “an item” to the trash room. The jury saw video of Veltman leaving the garbage room and heading back to his apartment a minute later.
Superior Court Justice Renee Pomerance excused the jury until Tuesday morning at 10 a.m.
jsims@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/JaneatLFPress
Nathaniel Veltman trial: Crown closes case after calling 19 witnesses
The Crown closed its case Thursday in the trial of Nathaniel Veltman, who is accused of running down the Afzaal family in London in 2021
Nathaniel Veltman rips his mom, details mental-health woes during searing testimony
Accused killer said the biggest reason for the way he turned out is his mother
Author of the article:Jane Sims
Published Oct 12, 2023 • Last updated 2 days ago • 6 minute read
WINDSOR – Accused killer Nathaniel Veltman was asked directly by defence lawyer Christopher Hicks if he ever felt loved by his mother.
“No,” he said quietly.
He said he only heard ‘I love you’ from his “religious fanatic” mother after the countless times she disciplined him, he testified Thursday at his Superior Court trial.
“I just felt she was saying it because she had to,” Veltman said. “I hated her.”
It was a day of shocks, surprises and scorching testimony at Veltman’s jury trial, where he has pleaded not guilty to four counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder for the attack on a London Muslim family that was struck by Veltman’s pickup truck at a northwest London intersection on June 6, 2021.
Talat Afzaal, 72, her son Salman Afzaal, 46, his wife Madiha Afzaal, 44, and their daughter Yumnah Afzaal, 15, were killed. Their son, nine at the time, was seriously injured, but survived.
Veltman was arrested minutes later at the Cherryhill Village Mall parking lot wearing an army helmet and a bulletproof vest. He told police later he was a white nationalist and struck the family “because they were Muslim.”
The shock in the courtroom on Thursday was that Veltman was the first witness called by the defence. The surprise was that he spent most of his full day in the witness box talking about his rigid, strict, Christian fundamentalist upbringing in Strathroy.
The scorching was reserved for his mother, who Veltman said raised him and his five siblings on the bible teaching of Proverbs 22:6: “Train up a child in the way he go and when he is old he will not depart from it.”
What that meant, he said, was a lonely, isolated childhood of home-schooling based on the bible, one that left him cut off from almost everything in the outside world. He described what amounted to psychological, physical and emotional abuse.
And there was discipline – lots of it. Mostly, he said, when he was perceived to be disrespecting his mother. Even the words “but” of “just” could prompt a lecture and a spanking. Veltman said he was spanked on a daily basis until he was 11 and forced to write out lines and bible verses or complete extra household chores when he was older.
If he cried, he said his mother threatened to take his photo and show it to the few friends he had in the home-schooling community. There was a TV, but it was rarely on. Internet and cellphone use was monitored and the only music played was Christian songs approved by his mother.
There was bible study at breakfast, lunch and dinner. He wasn’t allowed to leave the property without permission.
Some of his criticisms were bizarre. He said his mother took some of the money he earned for delivering flyers when he stuffed papers incorrectly. She said he had to buy her chocolate.
Church events beyond Sunday morning services even were disallowed, he said, because his mother was convinced there would be bad influences. He said he wet the bed until he was 11, developed strange habits like making “weird screeching sounds” for no reason, chewing constantly on the inside of his cheek and talking to imaginary friends.
At age seven, he said he was declared a fully committed Christian and his mother showed him a picture of people burning in hell that was “traumatizing.” That picture would replay in head, he said. He began to have obsessive thoughts.
His father, he said, was more passive, but his mother would excoriate Veltman for not being more interested in his father’s hobbies. He said he spent hours watching his father tinker with engines or woodwork.
Veltman said he began “loathing and hating” his mother. He wanted to go to a regular school – his mother said school “brainwashed” people – and have some friends. He was depressed and had suicidal thoughts.
Veltman said he was becoming aware something was wrong with him. He had heard the term obsessive-compulsive and asked his mother if he could see a doctor. His mother didn’t trust non-secular people and wanted to seek a ”spiritual solution.” She even suggested “demonic possession.”
By Grade 9, Veltman said he convinced his mother to let him participate in church social life. “I got this big wave of depression when I got home” because “I hated the fact I had to leave a couple hours of socializing for constant yelling and harassment.”
At 14, he got a job as a grocery store cashier. At 15, he added a job at an egg processing factory – his mother disapproved of it because he had to work on Sundays. At the same time, his father left the marriage and his mother forbade the children from communicating with him.
Veltman said he wasn’t afraid of her anymore and “this was the time I started to rebel.” He convinced her he could attend regular high school in Strathroy, but he discovered he was socially awkward and found it hard to make friends.
At 16, he moved out of his mother’s house and in with pre-approved friends of hers. He said she wouldn’t sign the required papers to register for another semester of school so he found a lawyer and emancipated himself from parental control.
Veltman said he left his mother’s friends’ home and moved in with the family of a high school friend, before moving into an apartment with a girlfriend. He did not talk to his mother.
The relationship soured and Veltman had a place of his own, which became “a party house” for his friends. He began using alcohol and marijuana, kept working and finishing high school.
“I went through a period, for lack of a better term, of substance abuse,” he said.
He said he was haunted by thoughts the secular world was corrupting him and would sometimes revert back to “becoming super Christian again.”
He said he moved to London in April 2020, and was by then consuming a lot of psychedelics, which he feared had caused him brain damage. With the pandemic, his Fanshawe College courses went online. Isolated, he said, “I began to start spending unhealthy time on the internet.”
Veltman dropped out of college and became enthralled by “conspiracy garbage propaganda” about ideas like “New World Order” and “bioweapons to make you compliant with the new system coming.” He said he was paranoid, suicidal and watching videos six or seven hours a day. He quit his job “and that made things worse.”
He threw out all his food when someone online detailed a diet to cope with the coming changes. He tried to block the videos, threw his possessions – his TV, his coffee table, couch and chair – in the garbage and gave away his gaming systems.
Veltman said through questions from Hicks there were perfectly reasonable explanations for actions linked to the hit-and-run.
He bought the pickup truck, he said, after the engine blew on his Pontiac Wave. His co-workers encouraged him to buy a pickup truck for fishing. He purchased the year-long warranty “because I had been foolish with my car.”
He had a friend put the grill bar on its front after he feared he had scratched it while off-roading near Wyoming and Forest with his brother.
And, Veltman said, on the items police found inside it: He always had a machete in his vehicles because he had seen violence at his high school. The airsoft gun was to play with his friends. He’d had the serrated knife since childhood and he had the sheath knife to cut plastic cords at work.
The steel-toed boots and the pants were for work, too.
He also agreed he had a friend over to his apartment to see his truck the day before the Afzaals died but “I told him I felt sick.” He told Hicks he was both physically and mentally ill.
Veltman returns to testify on Friday.
jsims@postmedia.com
twitter.com/JaneatLFPress
torontosun.com
Accused killer said the biggest reason for the way he turned out is his mother
Author of the article:Jane Sims
Published Oct 12, 2023 • Last updated 2 days ago • 6 minute read
WINDSOR – Accused killer Nathaniel Veltman was asked directly by defence lawyer Christopher Hicks if he ever felt loved by his mother.
“No,” he said quietly.
He said he only heard ‘I love you’ from his “religious fanatic” mother after the countless times she disciplined him, he testified Thursday at his Superior Court trial.
“I just felt she was saying it because she had to,” Veltman said. “I hated her.”
It was a day of shocks, surprises and scorching testimony at Veltman’s jury trial, where he has pleaded not guilty to four counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder for the attack on a London Muslim family that was struck by Veltman’s pickup truck at a northwest London intersection on June 6, 2021.
Talat Afzaal, 72, her son Salman Afzaal, 46, his wife Madiha Afzaal, 44, and their daughter Yumnah Afzaal, 15, were killed. Their son, nine at the time, was seriously injured, but survived.
Veltman was arrested minutes later at the Cherryhill Village Mall parking lot wearing an army helmet and a bulletproof vest. He told police later he was a white nationalist and struck the family “because they were Muslim.”
The shock in the courtroom on Thursday was that Veltman was the first witness called by the defence. The surprise was that he spent most of his full day in the witness box talking about his rigid, strict, Christian fundamentalist upbringing in Strathroy.
The scorching was reserved for his mother, who Veltman said raised him and his five siblings on the bible teaching of Proverbs 22:6: “Train up a child in the way he go and when he is old he will not depart from it.”
What that meant, he said, was a lonely, isolated childhood of home-schooling based on the bible, one that left him cut off from almost everything in the outside world. He described what amounted to psychological, physical and emotional abuse.
And there was discipline – lots of it. Mostly, he said, when he was perceived to be disrespecting his mother. Even the words “but” of “just” could prompt a lecture and a spanking. Veltman said he was spanked on a daily basis until he was 11 and forced to write out lines and bible verses or complete extra household chores when he was older.
If he cried, he said his mother threatened to take his photo and show it to the few friends he had in the home-schooling community. There was a TV, but it was rarely on. Internet and cellphone use was monitored and the only music played was Christian songs approved by his mother.
There was bible study at breakfast, lunch and dinner. He wasn’t allowed to leave the property without permission.
Some of his criticisms were bizarre. He said his mother took some of the money he earned for delivering flyers when he stuffed papers incorrectly. She said he had to buy her chocolate.
Church events beyond Sunday morning services even were disallowed, he said, because his mother was convinced there would be bad influences. He said he wet the bed until he was 11, developed strange habits like making “weird screeching sounds” for no reason, chewing constantly on the inside of his cheek and talking to imaginary friends.
At age seven, he said he was declared a fully committed Christian and his mother showed him a picture of people burning in hell that was “traumatizing.” That picture would replay in head, he said. He began to have obsessive thoughts.
His father, he said, was more passive, but his mother would excoriate Veltman for not being more interested in his father’s hobbies. He said he spent hours watching his father tinker with engines or woodwork.
Veltman said he began “loathing and hating” his mother. He wanted to go to a regular school – his mother said school “brainwashed” people – and have some friends. He was depressed and had suicidal thoughts.
Veltman said he was becoming aware something was wrong with him. He had heard the term obsessive-compulsive and asked his mother if he could see a doctor. His mother didn’t trust non-secular people and wanted to seek a ”spiritual solution.” She even suggested “demonic possession.”
By Grade 9, Veltman said he convinced his mother to let him participate in church social life. “I got this big wave of depression when I got home” because “I hated the fact I had to leave a couple hours of socializing for constant yelling and harassment.”
At 14, he got a job as a grocery store cashier. At 15, he added a job at an egg processing factory – his mother disapproved of it because he had to work on Sundays. At the same time, his father left the marriage and his mother forbade the children from communicating with him.
Veltman said he wasn’t afraid of her anymore and “this was the time I started to rebel.” He convinced her he could attend regular high school in Strathroy, but he discovered he was socially awkward and found it hard to make friends.
At 16, he moved out of his mother’s house and in with pre-approved friends of hers. He said she wouldn’t sign the required papers to register for another semester of school so he found a lawyer and emancipated himself from parental control.
Veltman said he left his mother’s friends’ home and moved in with the family of a high school friend, before moving into an apartment with a girlfriend. He did not talk to his mother.
The relationship soured and Veltman had a place of his own, which became “a party house” for his friends. He began using alcohol and marijuana, kept working and finishing high school.
“I went through a period, for lack of a better term, of substance abuse,” he said.
He said he was haunted by thoughts the secular world was corrupting him and would sometimes revert back to “becoming super Christian again.”
He said he moved to London in April 2020, and was by then consuming a lot of psychedelics, which he feared had caused him brain damage. With the pandemic, his Fanshawe College courses went online. Isolated, he said, “I began to start spending unhealthy time on the internet.”
Veltman dropped out of college and became enthralled by “conspiracy garbage propaganda” about ideas like “New World Order” and “bioweapons to make you compliant with the new system coming.” He said he was paranoid, suicidal and watching videos six or seven hours a day. He quit his job “and that made things worse.”
He threw out all his food when someone online detailed a diet to cope with the coming changes. He tried to block the videos, threw his possessions – his TV, his coffee table, couch and chair – in the garbage and gave away his gaming systems.
Veltman said through questions from Hicks there were perfectly reasonable explanations for actions linked to the hit-and-run.
He bought the pickup truck, he said, after the engine blew on his Pontiac Wave. His co-workers encouraged him to buy a pickup truck for fishing. He purchased the year-long warranty “because I had been foolish with my car.”
He had a friend put the grill bar on its front after he feared he had scratched it while off-roading near Wyoming and Forest with his brother.
And, Veltman said, on the items police found inside it: He always had a machete in his vehicles because he had seen violence at his high school. The airsoft gun was to play with his friends. He’d had the serrated knife since childhood and he had the sheath knife to cut plastic cords at work.
The steel-toed boots and the pants were for work, too.
He also agreed he had a friend over to his apartment to see his truck the day before the Afzaals died but “I told him I felt sick.” He told Hicks he was both physically and mentally ill.
Veltman returns to testify on Friday.
jsims@postmedia.com
twitter.com/JaneatLFPress
In searing testimony, Nathaniel Veltman rips mom, details mental-health woes
Accused killer Nathaniel Veltman said the biggest reason for the way he turned out is his mother.
Man accused in London, Ont., attack on Muslim family details ’process of decline’
Author of the article:Canadian Press
Canadian Press
Sonja Puzic
Published Oct 12, 2023 • Last updated 2 days ago • 4 minute read
The man accused of killing four members of a Muslim family in an alleged act of terrorism told a jury Thursday that he went through a process of mental “decline” during the pandemic, which included spending a “very unhealthy” amount of time on the internet.
Nathaniel Veltman took the stand in his own defence and said this decline began to take root when he moved to London, Ont., in April 2020 to be closer to Fanshawe College, where he’d been studying at the time.
But when classes were moved online and daily life changed due to COVID-19 restrictions, Veltman said he started consuming troubling content on the internet, some of which discussed the coronavirus, for hours each day.
By the time he went back to school later that year, Veltman said things got worse.
“I started to constantly watch this conspiracy garbage and propaganda,” he told the Windsor, Ont., courtroom where the trial is taking place. “I felt this suicidal depression, which I’d never felt before.”
Under questioning from his lawyer, Christopher Hicks, Veltman said he began displaying bizarre behaviour, which included throwing out most of the food in his apartment, ripping his television from the wall mount and throwing away his furniture.
“I started to compulsively destroy things that I had in my apartment,” he said, adding that he didn’t realize at the time that his depression was caused by the “garbage” he was consuming online. He said he thought that getting rid of his possessions might be the answer.
“I had this compulsion to start destroying things. I don’t know why,” he said.
Veltman is accused of deliberately hitting the Afzaal family with his truck in June 2021 while they were out for a walk in London, Ont. Prosecutors have alleged his actions amount to terrorism.
Salman Afzaal, 46; his 44-year-old wife, Madiha Salman; their 15-year-old daughter, Yumna; and her 74-year-old grandmother, Talat Afzaal, were killed in the attack, while the couple’s nine-year-old son was seriously injured but survived.
Veltman has pleaded not guilty to four counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder.
Earlier Thursday, Veltman testified that he and his five siblings, including a twin sister, were raised in Strathroy, Ont., by a largely distant and “introverted” father and a “religious fanatic” mother who homeschooled the kids and regularly spanked him until the age of 12.
Veltman said his upbringing made him increasingly angry, especially as he developed obsessive thoughts and what he said he later understood to be signs of mental health issues.
“I began obsessing over not thinking evil or violent things, which inevitably led me to think the worst thing a person could think,” he said, referring to his response to his mother’s Bible teachings that condemned “evil and murderous” thoughts.
The 22-year-old told the court that his homeschooling days included “Bible study first thing you wake up, Bible teaching during breakfast, Bible teaching during lunch, Bible teaching during supper.”
His mother didn’t know he had “mental issues,” Veltman said, and punished him if she thought he was being disrespectful or disobedient.
He testified that the family was kept away from other children and the wider community over fears that others could be a “bad” influence.
“My mother took extreme measures to maintain isolation from the secular world,” Veltman said.
Veltman said he was seven years old when his mother showed him pictures of people “being tortured and burned in hell” and told him that happens to everyone who isn’t Christian.
“I found it traumatizing,” he said. “I couldn’t get the picture out of my mind.”
That created an internal conflict, he said, because he “secretly loathed” his mother but was also afraid of going to hell for his hateful thoughts.
Veltman said he sometimes tried to speak to a sibling or his father about the situation but there would be “severe repercussions” if his mother found out.
He said he developed obsessive thoughts and ultimately realized that there was “something horribly wrong with me,” suspecting that he had obsessive compulsive disorder after he learned the definition of that mental health condition. He testified that he also exhibited behaviours as a child that he later in life came to believe were signs of autism.
Veltman said his mother refused to get him professional help and referred him to Bible verses to deal with what she perceived to be a spiritual issue. She “lashed out” when Veltman kept pushing to see a doctor, he said.
Veltman repeatedly mentioned having “pent up anger” and “seething” rage as a result of his upbringing. He said he began pushing back against his mother more after his parents separated and she eventually allowed him to enrol in a Strathroy high school in Grade 11.
Despite the resentment surrounding his childhood, Veltman said he embraced religion again by the time he was around 17 because “bad things” happened in his life and he felt that was because he had strayed from fundamentalist Christian teachings.
“I became a religious fanatic myself,” he said.
The Crown, which wrapped up its case last week, has argued that Veltman planned his attack for three months before driving his Dodge Ram truck directly at the Afzaal family.
Jurors have previously seen video of Veltman telling a detective he had been motivated by white nationalist beliefs and that his attack was politically motivated. Court also heard last week that Veltman wrote what prosecutors have called a manifesto peddling conspiracies about Muslims.
The case is the first where Canada’s terrorism laws are being put before a jury in a first-degree murder trial.
In his opening statement to the jury earlier Thursday, Veltman’s lawyer said the defence will also be calling forensic psychiatrist Dr. Julian Gojer, to testify about his assessment and diagnosis of Veltman.
Hicks said Gojer is qualified to discuss mental health disorders such as obsessive compulsive disorder and the impact of substance abuse disorders, including the use of hallucinogens.
“You will find it compelling evidence,” Hicks told the jury.
torontosun.com
Author of the article:Canadian Press
Canadian Press
Sonja Puzic
Published Oct 12, 2023 • Last updated 2 days ago • 4 minute read
The man accused of killing four members of a Muslim family in an alleged act of terrorism told a jury Thursday that he went through a process of mental “decline” during the pandemic, which included spending a “very unhealthy” amount of time on the internet.
Nathaniel Veltman took the stand in his own defence and said this decline began to take root when he moved to London, Ont., in April 2020 to be closer to Fanshawe College, where he’d been studying at the time.
But when classes were moved online and daily life changed due to COVID-19 restrictions, Veltman said he started consuming troubling content on the internet, some of which discussed the coronavirus, for hours each day.
By the time he went back to school later that year, Veltman said things got worse.
“I started to constantly watch this conspiracy garbage and propaganda,” he told the Windsor, Ont., courtroom where the trial is taking place. “I felt this suicidal depression, which I’d never felt before.”
Under questioning from his lawyer, Christopher Hicks, Veltman said he began displaying bizarre behaviour, which included throwing out most of the food in his apartment, ripping his television from the wall mount and throwing away his furniture.
“I started to compulsively destroy things that I had in my apartment,” he said, adding that he didn’t realize at the time that his depression was caused by the “garbage” he was consuming online. He said he thought that getting rid of his possessions might be the answer.
“I had this compulsion to start destroying things. I don’t know why,” he said.
Veltman is accused of deliberately hitting the Afzaal family with his truck in June 2021 while they were out for a walk in London, Ont. Prosecutors have alleged his actions amount to terrorism.
Salman Afzaal, 46; his 44-year-old wife, Madiha Salman; their 15-year-old daughter, Yumna; and her 74-year-old grandmother, Talat Afzaal, were killed in the attack, while the couple’s nine-year-old son was seriously injured but survived.
Veltman has pleaded not guilty to four counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder.
Earlier Thursday, Veltman testified that he and his five siblings, including a twin sister, were raised in Strathroy, Ont., by a largely distant and “introverted” father and a “religious fanatic” mother who homeschooled the kids and regularly spanked him until the age of 12.
Veltman said his upbringing made him increasingly angry, especially as he developed obsessive thoughts and what he said he later understood to be signs of mental health issues.
“I began obsessing over not thinking evil or violent things, which inevitably led me to think the worst thing a person could think,” he said, referring to his response to his mother’s Bible teachings that condemned “evil and murderous” thoughts.
The 22-year-old told the court that his homeschooling days included “Bible study first thing you wake up, Bible teaching during breakfast, Bible teaching during lunch, Bible teaching during supper.”
His mother didn’t know he had “mental issues,” Veltman said, and punished him if she thought he was being disrespectful or disobedient.
He testified that the family was kept away from other children and the wider community over fears that others could be a “bad” influence.
“My mother took extreme measures to maintain isolation from the secular world,” Veltman said.
Veltman said he was seven years old when his mother showed him pictures of people “being tortured and burned in hell” and told him that happens to everyone who isn’t Christian.
“I found it traumatizing,” he said. “I couldn’t get the picture out of my mind.”
That created an internal conflict, he said, because he “secretly loathed” his mother but was also afraid of going to hell for his hateful thoughts.
Veltman said he sometimes tried to speak to a sibling or his father about the situation but there would be “severe repercussions” if his mother found out.
He said he developed obsessive thoughts and ultimately realized that there was “something horribly wrong with me,” suspecting that he had obsessive compulsive disorder after he learned the definition of that mental health condition. He testified that he also exhibited behaviours as a child that he later in life came to believe were signs of autism.
Veltman said his mother refused to get him professional help and referred him to Bible verses to deal with what she perceived to be a spiritual issue. She “lashed out” when Veltman kept pushing to see a doctor, he said.
Veltman repeatedly mentioned having “pent up anger” and “seething” rage as a result of his upbringing. He said he began pushing back against his mother more after his parents separated and she eventually allowed him to enrol in a Strathroy high school in Grade 11.
Despite the resentment surrounding his childhood, Veltman said he embraced religion again by the time he was around 17 because “bad things” happened in his life and he felt that was because he had strayed from fundamentalist Christian teachings.
“I became a religious fanatic myself,” he said.
The Crown, which wrapped up its case last week, has argued that Veltman planned his attack for three months before driving his Dodge Ram truck directly at the Afzaal family.
Jurors have previously seen video of Veltman telling a detective he had been motivated by white nationalist beliefs and that his attack was politically motivated. Court also heard last week that Veltman wrote what prosecutors have called a manifesto peddling conspiracies about Muslims.
The case is the first where Canada’s terrorism laws are being put before a jury in a first-degree murder trial.
In his opening statement to the jury earlier Thursday, Veltman’s lawyer said the defence will also be calling forensic psychiatrist Dr. Julian Gojer, to testify about his assessment and diagnosis of Veltman.
Hicks said Gojer is qualified to discuss mental health disorders such as obsessive compulsive disorder and the impact of substance abuse disorders, including the use of hallucinogens.
“You will find it compelling evidence,” Hicks told the jury.
Man accused in London, Ont., attack on Muslim family details ’process of decline’
The man accused of killing four members of a Muslim family told a jury Thursday that he went through a process of mental “decline."
Man accused in London, Ont., attack tells jury conspiracy theories warped views
Author of the article:Canadian Press
Canadian Press
Sonja Puzic
Published Oct 13, 2023 • Last updated 2 days ago • 4 minute read
The man accused of killing four members of a Muslim family in an alleged act of terrorism told a jury Friday that his mind was “corrupted” by online conspiracy theories and he eventually developed a desire to engage in an act of violence.
In his second day of testimony, Nathaniel Veltman told court that as his mental state deteriorated during the pandemic, he began consuming more online content that included unfounded conspiracies about COVID-19 and Muslims.
“This content started to warp my view of the world,” he said. “It was starting to cause this seething anger.”
The 22-year-old said he was always drawn to “whatever was fringe and conspiracy related,” but didn’t initially identify with a lot of the content he was viewing.
He said he tried to block some of the websites he was visiting with an app originally intended to block access to pornography and even removed or destroyed some of his electronic devices, but he always went back to the disturbing content and became “addicted” to it.
“Slowly I became desensitized to the offensive material,” he testified. He said that material included a video made by the gunman responsible for the 2019 New Zealand mass killings at two mosques.
“My mind was becoming corrupted.”
On the stand in the Windsor, Ont., courtroom where the trial is taking place, Veltman has been detailing what he described as a process of mental decline that started when he began spending a lot of time on the internet in the early months of the pandemic as his London, Ont., college cancelled in-person classes.
He had earlier described a pattern of paranoia and obsessive thoughts on topics such as religion and pornography, which dated back to what he said was a troubled childhood and sometimes intensified when he consumed drugs and alcohol.
As time went on and after two aborted attempts to end his life in March 2021, Veltman said he began deliberately seeking out content he’d previously tried to resist.
“I no longer tried to avoid the things that I knew triggered something in me. I felt I had nothing to lose,” he said.
Veltman said his suicidal ideation “suddenly morphed into something else.”
“(I had) desire to engage in an act of violence and avenge these things that I was seeing,” he said, referring to extreme-right websites carrying baseless conspiracy theories about Muslims.
Veltman is accused of deliberately hitting the Afzaal family with his truck in June 2021 while they were out for a walk in London, Ont.
Salman Afzaal, 46; his 44-year-old wife, Madiha Salman; their 15-year-old daughter, Yumna; and her 74-year-old grandmother, Talat Afzaal, were killed in the attack, while the couple’s nine-year-old son was seriously hurt but survived.
Veltman has pleaded not guilty to four counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder.
Jurors have previously seen video of Veltman telling a detective that his attack had been motivated by white nationalist beliefs. The Crown has argued that Veltman planned an attack for three months before driving his Dodge Ram truck directly at the Afzaal family.
Under questioning from his lawyer Christopher Hicks, Veltman said that he drove his truck to Clinton, Ont., to gets its windows tinted a few days before he was arrested. He previously testified that he wanted the windows darkened for privacy.
Veltman said he walked around the town as he waited for the work on his vehicle to be done, stumbled upon a radio tower and decided to climb it. As he climbed higher, Veltman said he started having thoughts of letting go.
“I thought I wasn’t suicidal anymore,” he testified. “It was scaring me.”
Veltman also told the jury Friday about two instances in which he took psilocybin, or magic mushrooms.
He said he took a “large” amount of magic mushrooms in April 2020 that made him hear “demonic voices” and writhe on the floor.
“I forgot who I was, I forgot where I lived, I forgot what planet I was on … it was like a complete memory wipe,” he testified.
Veltman said he also consumed magic mushrooms on June 5, 2021, a day after his grandmother had died and he had gone to see her body.
Veltman said he was distraught over the death of the woman he considered his “substitute” mother and pressured a friend to give him more of the drugs than the friend thought was safe for him to consume. He said he sought the psychedelics because he was very disturbed at the time.
“I was desperate to escape from this hell that I was living in my mind,” he told the court.
The attack on the Afzaal family occurred on June 6, 2021.
Veltman told the jury on Thursday that he had a “fundamentalist” Christian upbringing marked by regular punishments from his mother, which included spankings.
He said he was homeschooled until Grade 11 and the isolation from the wider community made him socially awkward and drawn to “outcasts” and “bad” crowds later in life.
Veltman’s case is the first where Canada’s terrorism laws are being put before a jury in a first-degree murder trial.
The trial is set to resume Monday.
torontosun.com
Author of the article:Canadian Press
Canadian Press
Sonja Puzic
Published Oct 13, 2023 • Last updated 2 days ago • 4 minute read
The man accused of killing four members of a Muslim family in an alleged act of terrorism told a jury Friday that his mind was “corrupted” by online conspiracy theories and he eventually developed a desire to engage in an act of violence.
In his second day of testimony, Nathaniel Veltman told court that as his mental state deteriorated during the pandemic, he began consuming more online content that included unfounded conspiracies about COVID-19 and Muslims.
“This content started to warp my view of the world,” he said. “It was starting to cause this seething anger.”
The 22-year-old said he was always drawn to “whatever was fringe and conspiracy related,” but didn’t initially identify with a lot of the content he was viewing.
He said he tried to block some of the websites he was visiting with an app originally intended to block access to pornography and even removed or destroyed some of his electronic devices, but he always went back to the disturbing content and became “addicted” to it.
“Slowly I became desensitized to the offensive material,” he testified. He said that material included a video made by the gunman responsible for the 2019 New Zealand mass killings at two mosques.
“My mind was becoming corrupted.”
On the stand in the Windsor, Ont., courtroom where the trial is taking place, Veltman has been detailing what he described as a process of mental decline that started when he began spending a lot of time on the internet in the early months of the pandemic as his London, Ont., college cancelled in-person classes.
He had earlier described a pattern of paranoia and obsessive thoughts on topics such as religion and pornography, which dated back to what he said was a troubled childhood and sometimes intensified when he consumed drugs and alcohol.
As time went on and after two aborted attempts to end his life in March 2021, Veltman said he began deliberately seeking out content he’d previously tried to resist.
“I no longer tried to avoid the things that I knew triggered something in me. I felt I had nothing to lose,” he said.
Veltman said his suicidal ideation “suddenly morphed into something else.”
“(I had) desire to engage in an act of violence and avenge these things that I was seeing,” he said, referring to extreme-right websites carrying baseless conspiracy theories about Muslims.
Veltman is accused of deliberately hitting the Afzaal family with his truck in June 2021 while they were out for a walk in London, Ont.
Salman Afzaal, 46; his 44-year-old wife, Madiha Salman; their 15-year-old daughter, Yumna; and her 74-year-old grandmother, Talat Afzaal, were killed in the attack, while the couple’s nine-year-old son was seriously hurt but survived.
Veltman has pleaded not guilty to four counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder.
Jurors have previously seen video of Veltman telling a detective that his attack had been motivated by white nationalist beliefs. The Crown has argued that Veltman planned an attack for three months before driving his Dodge Ram truck directly at the Afzaal family.
Under questioning from his lawyer Christopher Hicks, Veltman said that he drove his truck to Clinton, Ont., to gets its windows tinted a few days before he was arrested. He previously testified that he wanted the windows darkened for privacy.
Veltman said he walked around the town as he waited for the work on his vehicle to be done, stumbled upon a radio tower and decided to climb it. As he climbed higher, Veltman said he started having thoughts of letting go.
“I thought I wasn’t suicidal anymore,” he testified. “It was scaring me.”
Veltman also told the jury Friday about two instances in which he took psilocybin, or magic mushrooms.
He said he took a “large” amount of magic mushrooms in April 2020 that made him hear “demonic voices” and writhe on the floor.
“I forgot who I was, I forgot where I lived, I forgot what planet I was on … it was like a complete memory wipe,” he testified.
Veltman said he also consumed magic mushrooms on June 5, 2021, a day after his grandmother had died and he had gone to see her body.
Veltman said he was distraught over the death of the woman he considered his “substitute” mother and pressured a friend to give him more of the drugs than the friend thought was safe for him to consume. He said he sought the psychedelics because he was very disturbed at the time.
“I was desperate to escape from this hell that I was living in my mind,” he told the court.
The attack on the Afzaal family occurred on June 6, 2021.
Veltman told the jury on Thursday that he had a “fundamentalist” Christian upbringing marked by regular punishments from his mother, which included spankings.
He said he was homeschooled until Grade 11 and the isolation from the wider community made him socially awkward and drawn to “outcasts” and “bad” crowds later in life.
Veltman’s case is the first where Canada’s terrorism laws are being put before a jury in a first-degree murder trial.
The trial is set to resume Monday.
Man accused in London, Ont., attack tells jury conspiracy theories warped views
The man accused of killing four members of a Muslim family in an alleged act of terrorism is testifying today about his use of hallucinogens
Nathaniel Veltman details suicide attempts, dark-web obsessions at terrorism trial
He said he tried, and failed, to kill himself twice. So Nathaniel Veltman said he decided to turn his internal struggle outwards to the world.
Author of the article:Jane Sims
Published Oct 13, 2023 • Last updated 2 days ago • 6 minute read
WINDSOR – The day before he ran his pickup truck into a Muslim family at a London intersection, Nathaniel Veltman said he was looking for an “escape.”
“I wanted to escape from the endless addiction to garbage on the Internet constantly,” he said in his testimony at his murder trial.
He chose to take psilocybin – magic mushrooms – a hallucinogen that he tried more than a year earlier that sent him on a harrowing trip where he was in “a state of agony” when he tried to fight the high, had him hearing demons and losing all sense of himself before he had “a beautiful experience.”
That followed with days of feeling detached, like he had undergone a personality change.
But in the early morning hours of June 5, 2021, after his grandmother had died and his suicidal thoughts had returned, “I was at the end of my rope. I felt the last strings I was holding onto were slipping,” he said.
“I was desperate to escape this hell I was living in my mind.”
Veltman spent his second day in the witness box inviting the jury to hear about what he said was a never ending conflict going on in his head, the push-and-pull of addiction versus religious fanaticism, his obsession with going to hell, his isolation, his two attempts at suicide, his overriding compulsion for fringe online content full of right-wing conspiracy and racist subject matter, and his choice to commit an act of violence.
But what Veltman hasn’t spoke to the jury about yet is his account of what happened when he got into his truck on June 6, 2021 and ran down the Afzaal family, killing Talat Afzaal, 72, her son Salman Afzaal, 46, his wife Madiha Salman, 44 and their daughter Yumnah Afzaal, 15, and seriously injuring their nine-year-old son.
Veltman has pleaded not guilty to four counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder. He told the police shortly after his arrest minutes after the hit-and-run that he had targeted the family “because they were Muslim.”
The prosecution is seeking to prove that the killings were both planned and deliberate and that they were acts of white nationalist terrorism.
Defence lawyer Christopher Hicks spent Thursday asking Veltman, who turned his body in the witness box to look directly at the jury, about life after he moved on from his strict, Christian fundamentalist household in Strathroy where he was home-schooled by a “religious fanatic” mother, to when he moved to London in April 2020 to continue his college studies.
It was around this time when Veltman had the first mushroom trip with a co-worker at a Strathroy egg processing facility. And it was at the beginning of the pandemic.
His obsessive behaviours had started long before. At 18, he said, he was obsessed with pornography and with his own religious fanaticism. He was haunted by images of people in hell so much that he couldn’t stop thinking about it. He punished himself by stabbing his own genitals after he masturbated.
Those obsessions morphed into politics and his belief that the government was spying on him and trying to brainwash society. He got his information online, tapping into far-right and fringe websites on the dark web full of “shock humour” and conspiracy theories.
By 2020, Veltman said he couldn’t stop looking at them. He “became somewhat depressed” and “as soon as COVID hit, I thought it was a big conspiracy.” When he moved to London and his college courses were cancelled he found comfort online.
Veltman was trying to find “the political truths about society” and admitted he “always had a conspiratorial mindset.” He used a browser that kept his identity anonymous.
His studies began to suffer. He quit his job, but that gave him more time to look at online content. He read about “Black on white crime” and how the “mainstream media” was ignoring it. He stopped eating processed food because a website told him that the government was using it to control society. He destroyed his furniture and personal property.
And the COVID-19 vaccine was “the mark of the beast and if you took it, you’re going to hell.”
He tried to block the information by using a Christian app that would stop porn and extreme content from appearing on his screens, but would ultimately take them down. He said he destroyed his electronics – eight cellphones, three laptops, two TVs, one he ripped off the wall, and a gaming system – to stop looking at the content.
“This content began to start to warp my view of the world,” he said adding that he spent “more and more and more time (online) to the point I could no longer function at school.” He was online up to 12 hours a day.
Veltman said he was “starting to spiral out of control” with suicidal thoughts and depression. The content made him “look around and feel like the world was falling apart and coming to an end.”
He said he barely got through his college semester and went back to work. He looked at websites while on breaks and listened to far-right podcasts while in the shower. The content would “trigger intense rage.”
“My suicidal ideation and desire for annihilation became increasingly stronger,” he said.
He said all of his online activities made him think he had “access to truths nobody else knows.” His depression worsened.
In March 2020, he tried twice to kill himself, using the chain on homemade nunchucks by tying one end to his bedpost and the other around his neck. “It was more painful than I thought it would be,” he said. “I stopped and decided to keep trying a little bit longer.”
He also decided that the time had come for him to look at even more extreme websites that he had avoided because “I had nothing to lose.”
They were graphic videos of gruesome crimes, of beatings and murders and accounts about “gang rapes , grooming gangs and grisly murders.”
Veltman was careful in his testimony to note that “the child rapes in the U.K.” may not be associated to Muslims and could breed conspiracies. But at that time, he was seeing racist accounts targeting Islam and Arabs and linking them to sex crimes, causing Veltman to have “unspeakable rage.”
And he “decided to engage in violence.”
He dropped out of college and was back at work because “I felt I was going insane,” with thoughts of violence. He said he was “transferring his suicidal ideation for annihilation.”
He said he couldn’t resist his online fascinations. He watched and rewatched the Christchurch mosque killings by Brenton Tarrant when he was in a rage.
Hicks asked Veltman if he ever saw a doctor for mental illness. Veltman said he didn’t because he thought it wasn’t real and could be “demonic possession.” He told himself that he had an enlightened vision of what was really going on in the world and “I have to be strong.”
On June 3, 2021, he drove to Clinton, Ont. to have the windows of his pickup truck – the one he was driving when he killed the Afzaals – tinted. He said while he waited for the work to be done, he walked around the town and decided to climb a radio tower.
But as he climbed higher, he said he had the urge to let go. “It shocked me because I didn’t think I was suicidal anymore.”
Two days later, he was buying the mushrooms and trying to escape from his reality, he said.
The trial continues on Monday afternoon.
jsims@postmedia.com
twitter.com/JaneatLFPress
torontosun.com
He said he tried, and failed, to kill himself twice. So Nathaniel Veltman said he decided to turn his internal struggle outwards to the world.
Author of the article:Jane Sims
Published Oct 13, 2023 • Last updated 2 days ago • 6 minute read
WINDSOR – The day before he ran his pickup truck into a Muslim family at a London intersection, Nathaniel Veltman said he was looking for an “escape.”
“I wanted to escape from the endless addiction to garbage on the Internet constantly,” he said in his testimony at his murder trial.
He chose to take psilocybin – magic mushrooms – a hallucinogen that he tried more than a year earlier that sent him on a harrowing trip where he was in “a state of agony” when he tried to fight the high, had him hearing demons and losing all sense of himself before he had “a beautiful experience.”
That followed with days of feeling detached, like he had undergone a personality change.
But in the early morning hours of June 5, 2021, after his grandmother had died and his suicidal thoughts had returned, “I was at the end of my rope. I felt the last strings I was holding onto were slipping,” he said.
“I was desperate to escape this hell I was living in my mind.”
Veltman spent his second day in the witness box inviting the jury to hear about what he said was a never ending conflict going on in his head, the push-and-pull of addiction versus religious fanaticism, his obsession with going to hell, his isolation, his two attempts at suicide, his overriding compulsion for fringe online content full of right-wing conspiracy and racist subject matter, and his choice to commit an act of violence.
But what Veltman hasn’t spoke to the jury about yet is his account of what happened when he got into his truck on June 6, 2021 and ran down the Afzaal family, killing Talat Afzaal, 72, her son Salman Afzaal, 46, his wife Madiha Salman, 44 and their daughter Yumnah Afzaal, 15, and seriously injuring their nine-year-old son.
Veltman has pleaded not guilty to four counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder. He told the police shortly after his arrest minutes after the hit-and-run that he had targeted the family “because they were Muslim.”
The prosecution is seeking to prove that the killings were both planned and deliberate and that they were acts of white nationalist terrorism.
Defence lawyer Christopher Hicks spent Thursday asking Veltman, who turned his body in the witness box to look directly at the jury, about life after he moved on from his strict, Christian fundamentalist household in Strathroy where he was home-schooled by a “religious fanatic” mother, to when he moved to London in April 2020 to continue his college studies.
It was around this time when Veltman had the first mushroom trip with a co-worker at a Strathroy egg processing facility. And it was at the beginning of the pandemic.
His obsessive behaviours had started long before. At 18, he said, he was obsessed with pornography and with his own religious fanaticism. He was haunted by images of people in hell so much that he couldn’t stop thinking about it. He punished himself by stabbing his own genitals after he masturbated.
Those obsessions morphed into politics and his belief that the government was spying on him and trying to brainwash society. He got his information online, tapping into far-right and fringe websites on the dark web full of “shock humour” and conspiracy theories.
By 2020, Veltman said he couldn’t stop looking at them. He “became somewhat depressed” and “as soon as COVID hit, I thought it was a big conspiracy.” When he moved to London and his college courses were cancelled he found comfort online.
Veltman was trying to find “the political truths about society” and admitted he “always had a conspiratorial mindset.” He used a browser that kept his identity anonymous.
His studies began to suffer. He quit his job, but that gave him more time to look at online content. He read about “Black on white crime” and how the “mainstream media” was ignoring it. He stopped eating processed food because a website told him that the government was using it to control society. He destroyed his furniture and personal property.
And the COVID-19 vaccine was “the mark of the beast and if you took it, you’re going to hell.”
He tried to block the information by using a Christian app that would stop porn and extreme content from appearing on his screens, but would ultimately take them down. He said he destroyed his electronics – eight cellphones, three laptops, two TVs, one he ripped off the wall, and a gaming system – to stop looking at the content.
“This content began to start to warp my view of the world,” he said adding that he spent “more and more and more time (online) to the point I could no longer function at school.” He was online up to 12 hours a day.
Veltman said he was “starting to spiral out of control” with suicidal thoughts and depression. The content made him “look around and feel like the world was falling apart and coming to an end.”
He said he barely got through his college semester and went back to work. He looked at websites while on breaks and listened to far-right podcasts while in the shower. The content would “trigger intense rage.”
“My suicidal ideation and desire for annihilation became increasingly stronger,” he said.
He said all of his online activities made him think he had “access to truths nobody else knows.” His depression worsened.
In March 2020, he tried twice to kill himself, using the chain on homemade nunchucks by tying one end to his bedpost and the other around his neck. “It was more painful than I thought it would be,” he said. “I stopped and decided to keep trying a little bit longer.”
He also decided that the time had come for him to look at even more extreme websites that he had avoided because “I had nothing to lose.”
They were graphic videos of gruesome crimes, of beatings and murders and accounts about “gang rapes , grooming gangs and grisly murders.”
Veltman was careful in his testimony to note that “the child rapes in the U.K.” may not be associated to Muslims and could breed conspiracies. But at that time, he was seeing racist accounts targeting Islam and Arabs and linking them to sex crimes, causing Veltman to have “unspeakable rage.”
And he “decided to engage in violence.”
He dropped out of college and was back at work because “I felt I was going insane,” with thoughts of violence. He said he was “transferring his suicidal ideation for annihilation.”
He said he couldn’t resist his online fascinations. He watched and rewatched the Christchurch mosque killings by Brenton Tarrant when he was in a rage.
Hicks asked Veltman if he ever saw a doctor for mental illness. Veltman said he didn’t because he thought it wasn’t real and could be “demonic possession.” He told himself that he had an enlightened vision of what was really going on in the world and “I have to be strong.”
On June 3, 2021, he drove to Clinton, Ont. to have the windows of his pickup truck – the one he was driving when he killed the Afzaals – tinted. He said while he waited for the work to be done, he walked around the town and decided to climb a radio tower.
But as he climbed higher, he said he had the urge to let go. “It shocked me because I didn’t think I was suicidal anymore.”
Two days later, he was buying the mushrooms and trying to escape from his reality, he said.
The trial continues on Monday afternoon.
jsims@postmedia.com
twitter.com/JaneatLFPress
Nathaniel Veltman details suicide attempts, dark web obsessions
He said he tried, and failed, to kill himself twice. So Nathaniel Veltman decided to turn his internal struggle outwards to the world.
Nathaniel Veltman tells jury he explored attacking Muslims in Toronto
The 22-year-old is accused of deliberately hitting the Afzaal family with his truck
Author of the article:Canadian Press
Canadian Press
Maan Alhmidi
Published Oct 17, 2023 • 2 minute read
The man accused of killing four members of a Muslim family in an alleged act of terrorism in London, Ont., told a jury Monday that he drove to Toronto a day before the attack to explore the possibility of targeting Muslims in that city.
On the stand in the Windsor courtroom where his trial is taking place, Nathaniel Veltman gave a detailed description of his actions leading up to the June 2021 attack that left four members of the Afzaal family dead and one seriously injured.
Veltman said he was feeling an urge to commit an act of violence in the days before the attack and he took a road trip from his apartment in London to explore the possibility of attacking Muslims in Toronto.
“I was so agitated and didn’t feel right in the mind,” he said. “I was thinking, ‘Why don’t I think about committing an attack in the future.”‘
The 22-year-old said he put on a bulletproof vest and military-style helmet when he was driving to Toronto, and he saw a group of Muslims who seemed around his age walking around in the city and felt an urge to run them over.
“As soon as I saw them, I instantly was hit with this massive wave of panic and nausea,” he said. “I felt an urge to step on the gas and I started panicking and my heart started beating faster and I turned around.”
Veltman said he then left the area as fast as he could, heading back to London. He said he arrived in his apartment around 2 a.m. on June 6, 2021. He went to bed later and then got up to drive to his job at an egg factory, where he worked from 10 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.
Before court adjourned for the day, Veltman said he was driving around London after work.
Veltman is accused of deliberately hitting the Afzaal family with his truck while they were out for a walk in the city that evening, and prosecutors have alleged his actions amount to an act of terrorism.
He has pleaded not guilty to four counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder.
Salman Afzaal, 46; his 44-year-old wife, Madiha Salman; their 15-year-old daughter, Yumna; and her 74-year-old grandmother, Talat Afzaal, were killed in the attack, while the couple’s nine-year-old son was seriously hurt but survived.
Jurors have previously seen video of Veltman telling a detective that his attack had been motivated by white nationalist beliefs.
The Crown has argued that Veltman planned an attack for three months before driving his Dodge Ram truck directly at the family.
Veltman’s case is the first where Canada’s terrorism laws are being put before a jury in a first-degree murder trial.
Veltman had told the jury last week that his mind was “corrupted” by online conspiracy theories and that he eventually developed a desire to engage in an act of violence.
He said his mental state deteriorated during the pandemic, and he began consuming more online content that included unfounded conspiracies about COVID-19 and Muslims.
“This content started to warp my view of the world,” he said last week. “It was starting to cause this seething anger.”
The trial is set to resume Tuesday.
torontosun.com
The 22-year-old is accused of deliberately hitting the Afzaal family with his truck
Author of the article:Canadian Press
Canadian Press
Maan Alhmidi
Published Oct 17, 2023 • 2 minute read
The man accused of killing four members of a Muslim family in an alleged act of terrorism in London, Ont., told a jury Monday that he drove to Toronto a day before the attack to explore the possibility of targeting Muslims in that city.
On the stand in the Windsor courtroom where his trial is taking place, Nathaniel Veltman gave a detailed description of his actions leading up to the June 2021 attack that left four members of the Afzaal family dead and one seriously injured.
Veltman said he was feeling an urge to commit an act of violence in the days before the attack and he took a road trip from his apartment in London to explore the possibility of attacking Muslims in Toronto.
“I was so agitated and didn’t feel right in the mind,” he said. “I was thinking, ‘Why don’t I think about committing an attack in the future.”‘
The 22-year-old said he put on a bulletproof vest and military-style helmet when he was driving to Toronto, and he saw a group of Muslims who seemed around his age walking around in the city and felt an urge to run them over.
“As soon as I saw them, I instantly was hit with this massive wave of panic and nausea,” he said. “I felt an urge to step on the gas and I started panicking and my heart started beating faster and I turned around.”
Veltman said he then left the area as fast as he could, heading back to London. He said he arrived in his apartment around 2 a.m. on June 6, 2021. He went to bed later and then got up to drive to his job at an egg factory, where he worked from 10 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.
Before court adjourned for the day, Veltman said he was driving around London after work.
Veltman is accused of deliberately hitting the Afzaal family with his truck while they were out for a walk in the city that evening, and prosecutors have alleged his actions amount to an act of terrorism.
He has pleaded not guilty to four counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder.
Salman Afzaal, 46; his 44-year-old wife, Madiha Salman; their 15-year-old daughter, Yumna; and her 74-year-old grandmother, Talat Afzaal, were killed in the attack, while the couple’s nine-year-old son was seriously hurt but survived.
Jurors have previously seen video of Veltman telling a detective that his attack had been motivated by white nationalist beliefs.
The Crown has argued that Veltman planned an attack for three months before driving his Dodge Ram truck directly at the family.
Veltman’s case is the first where Canada’s terrorism laws are being put before a jury in a first-degree murder trial.
Veltman had told the jury last week that his mind was “corrupted” by online conspiracy theories and that he eventually developed a desire to engage in an act of violence.
He said his mental state deteriorated during the pandemic, and he began consuming more online content that included unfounded conspiracies about COVID-19 and Muslims.
“This content started to warp my view of the world,” he said last week. “It was starting to cause this seething anger.”
The trial is set to resume Tuesday.
Nathaniel Veltman tells jury he explored attacking Muslims in Toronto
He took a road trip from his apartment in London to explore the possibility of attacking Muslims in Toronto.
Accused in London, Ont., attack says he felt 'urge' to hit Muslim family members
Author of the article:Canadian Press
Canadian Press
Maan Alhmidi
Published Oct 17, 2023 • Last updated 1 day ago • 2 minute read
The man accused of killing four members of a Muslim family in an alleged act of terrorism told a jury Tuesday he felt an “urge” to hit them with his truck after seeing them walking on a sidewalk in London, Ont.
On the stand in the Windsor, Ont., courtroom where his trial is taking place, Nathaniel Veltman said he knew the victims were Muslims from the clothes they were wearing and he noticed that the man in the group had a beard.
“I was driving around a lot of random streets,” he said. “I came across the victims … I saw them on my left”
Veltman said he first drove past the family and then made a U-turn back in their direction.
“Suddenly the sick feeling came again and the urge to drive into them,” he told the court.
Veltman said he then drove directly at the family, veering to the right with the intention of crashing into them with his pickup truck.
“There was a very loud bang,” he said “I remember feeling this massive shock and horror. I was like: ‘Oh my God, I did this. This is not just a thought. This is real.”’
Veltman said he panicked after he hit the family and sped away, driving dangerously around cars before pulling into a parking lot where he saw a taxi driver standing near a cab. He said he decided to ask that driver to call 911 so he could turn himself in.
Twenty-two-year-old Veltman is accused of deliberately hitting the Afzaal family with his truck in June 2021 while they were out for a walk in London — prosecutors have alleged his actions amount to an act of terrorism.
Veltman has pleaded not guilty to four counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder.
Salman Afzaal, 46; his 44-year-old wife, Madiha Salman; their 15-year-old daughter, Yumna; and her 74-year-old grandmother, Talat Afzaal, were killed in the attack, while the couple’s nine-year-old son was seriously hurt but survived.
Veltman told the jury on Monday that he had been feeling an urge to commit an act of violence in the days leading up to the June 2021 attack and took a road trip from his apartment in London to Toronto to explore the possibility of attacking Muslims in that city.
He said he panicked once he saw a group of Muslim people walking in Toronto and headed back to his apartment in London.
He said he arrived in his apartment around 2 a.m. on June 6, 2021. He went to bed later and then got up to drive to his job at an egg factory in the morning, where he worked from 10 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., court heard. He then left his home shortly after returning from work that evening and hit the Afzaal family, court heard.
Jurors have previously seen video of Veltman telling a detective that his attack had been motivated by white nationalist beliefs.
The case is the first where Canada’s terrorism laws are being put before a jury in a first-degree murder trial.
torontosun.com
Author of the article:Canadian Press
Canadian Press
Maan Alhmidi
Published Oct 17, 2023 • Last updated 1 day ago • 2 minute read
The man accused of killing four members of a Muslim family in an alleged act of terrorism told a jury Tuesday he felt an “urge” to hit them with his truck after seeing them walking on a sidewalk in London, Ont.
On the stand in the Windsor, Ont., courtroom where his trial is taking place, Nathaniel Veltman said he knew the victims were Muslims from the clothes they were wearing and he noticed that the man in the group had a beard.
“I was driving around a lot of random streets,” he said. “I came across the victims … I saw them on my left”
Veltman said he first drove past the family and then made a U-turn back in their direction.
“Suddenly the sick feeling came again and the urge to drive into them,” he told the court.
Veltman said he then drove directly at the family, veering to the right with the intention of crashing into them with his pickup truck.
“There was a very loud bang,” he said “I remember feeling this massive shock and horror. I was like: ‘Oh my God, I did this. This is not just a thought. This is real.”’
Veltman said he panicked after he hit the family and sped away, driving dangerously around cars before pulling into a parking lot where he saw a taxi driver standing near a cab. He said he decided to ask that driver to call 911 so he could turn himself in.
Twenty-two-year-old Veltman is accused of deliberately hitting the Afzaal family with his truck in June 2021 while they were out for a walk in London — prosecutors have alleged his actions amount to an act of terrorism.
Veltman has pleaded not guilty to four counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder.
Salman Afzaal, 46; his 44-year-old wife, Madiha Salman; their 15-year-old daughter, Yumna; and her 74-year-old grandmother, Talat Afzaal, were killed in the attack, while the couple’s nine-year-old son was seriously hurt but survived.
Veltman told the jury on Monday that he had been feeling an urge to commit an act of violence in the days leading up to the June 2021 attack and took a road trip from his apartment in London to Toronto to explore the possibility of attacking Muslims in that city.
He said he panicked once he saw a group of Muslim people walking in Toronto and headed back to his apartment in London.
He said he arrived in his apartment around 2 a.m. on June 6, 2021. He went to bed later and then got up to drive to his job at an egg factory in the morning, where he worked from 10 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., court heard. He then left his home shortly after returning from work that evening and hit the Afzaal family, court heard.
Jurors have previously seen video of Veltman telling a detective that his attack had been motivated by white nationalist beliefs.
The case is the first where Canada’s terrorism laws are being put before a jury in a first-degree murder trial.
Accused in London, Ont., attack says he felt 'urge' to hit Muslim family members
The man accused of killing four members of a Muslim family in London, Ont., is telling a jury he felt an "urge" to hit them with his truck.
So. . . what do y'all think he's gonna catch? Fifteen-minute time-out? Have to stay in from playtime for a week? One less cookie at snacktime?