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.
He said he was feeling detached from reality and he wanted to escape.
"I was driving so erratically and trying to get as far away as I could from what I had done because I didn't want to see what happened," he said.
"My adrenalin took over. Something was taking me over. I was afraid someone else was going to get hurt."
He also told the jury that he wrote a manifesto in the weeks before the attack describing himself as a white nationalist and peddling conspiracy theories about Muslims.
He said online content that included such baseless conspiracy theories caused him to become enraged and wanting to commit violence, so he would watch the attack video made by the gunman in the 2019 New Zealand mass killing of 51 worshippers at two mosques.
"Sometimes I use it as a coping mechanism," he said.
"I'd calm myself down. I would try to forget about that incident and say, 'No, I'm fine. I'm not going to do anything.' But periodically when I stumble across something on the internet that would cause the rage, it would happen again."
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 and prosecutors have alleged his actions amount to an act of 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 hurt but survived.
Veltman has pleaded not guilty to four counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder.
He 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 attack and took a road trip 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, where he worked until 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 after his arrest 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.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 17, 2023.
Maan Alhmidi, The Canadian Press
