Nathaniel Veltman blames his mother in scorching testimony at murder trial

WINDSOR – Accused killer Nathaniel Veltman was asked directly by defense lawyer Christopher Hicks if he ever felt loved by his mother.

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“No,” he said quietly.

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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 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.

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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 defense. 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 goes 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.

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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 reading 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.

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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.

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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.”

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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.

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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 didn’t 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.”

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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 left 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 – into 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.”

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He had a friend put the grill bar on his 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.

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