Accused killer of London, Ont., Muslim family says he considered Toronto attack

A day before he drove his pickup truck into a London, Ont., Muslim family, killing three generations, Nathaniel Veltman drove to Toronto to scope out possible locations for a vehicular attack on pedestrians, but fought the urge to "step on the gas" to kill a group of Muslims he saw walking there, he told the jury at his murder and terrorism trial. 

"The urge to step on the gas, I had never felt like that before. I was fighting it and fighting it and I thought to myself, 'No, they look about my age,' and I ended up turning and leaving as fast as I could," the accused told the jury on his third day of testimony in his own defence.

Asked by his lawyer how the prospect of harming someone felt, he said: "It didn't feel good at all. I felt like I was going to throw up."

A day later, on June 6, 2021, four members of the Afzaal family were killed when Veltman crashed into them on a suburban London street with his pickup truck, wearing the same body armour and military-style helmet he was wearing on the trip to Toronto. 

Yumnah Afzaal, 15, her parents Madiha Salman, 44, and Salman Afzaal, 46, and family matriarch Talat Afzaal, 74, were killed. A nine-year-old boy survived. 

The 22-year-old accused was arrested in the hours following the attack. He's charged with four counts of first-degree murder, one count of attempted murder and terrorism counts. He has pleaded not guilty. 

The court has heard about what he characterized as his mental deterioration, which got worse after March 2021 when he was spending hours a day watching far-right material online — including on the dark web — including reading the manifesto of a mass shooter from New Zealand. It was also then that he started composing his own manifesto, which the jury has heard parts of, entitled A White Awakening. 

Court has heard the accused's grandmother died on June 4, 2021, and he took about three grams of psilocybin (psychedelic mushrooms) in the very early hours of June 5, 2021, before going to Toronto. 

After consuming the mushrooms in a tea, as well as eating them, he said he felt panic and filled with horror about the material he had been consuming online. "At the end of the high, I started to feel like something had gone wrong in my mind. I felt sick and really detached and I thought I effed something up in my head. I felt like I was out of my body and like I was floating above my head," he testified. "I looked in the mirror and didn't recognize who I was." 

He said he went to Toronto because he couldn't spend another night in his apartment looking at far-right content online. 

When he got home to London, he went straight to his downtown apartment and slept before a 10 a.m. shift at an egg processing plant in Strathroy, Ont., his hometown. 

"At work, I was agitated. I felt sick and repulsed about the day before, just the fact that I had driven to Toronto at all, that this urge had come," the accused testified. His co-workers asked if he was OK, he said. He also felt enraged that he had to wear a mask because of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Again, he testified he couldn't spend another night in his apartment, so he took his debit card and driver's licence and went out to get food. He also put on a white t-shirt he had spray-painted with a giant cross on the front, and another on the back. Close to home, he pulled over, and donned his military helmet and bulletproof vest. 

"I began driving and I thought, 'Why has this dream-like feeling not gone away?' I started driving down random streets, panicking at the thought of what would end up happening if I ended up acting out these thoughts. I was actually hoping I wouldn't see anybody," he said. He recalled thinking he should turn back, but then he came across the victims.