Sentencing date set for mass murderer Nathaniel Veltman

Convicted mass murderer Nathaniel Veltman’s future will be decided early in the new year.

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While his mandatory life sentence with no chance of parole for 25 years won’t be in dispute, what will be is whether the hit-and-run murders of four members of a London Muslim family and the injuring of a young boy were acts of white nationalist terrorism.

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Friday, Veltman made a brief appearance in Windsor Superior Court for a scheduling session. A pre-hearing conference is set for next Tuesday, Dec. 5, and Jan. 4 and 5 were set aside for sentencing submissions in London before Regional Senior Justice Renee Pomerance.

Veltman made his brief video appearance Friday from the South West Detention Center in Windsor. His hair was cut short in a buzz cut and he was wearing jail-issued orange garb. He said nothing.

The sentencing dates were confirmed by Superior Court Justice Bruce Thomas.

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Veltman, 22, was convicted by a jury of four counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder on Nov. 16, following a marathon 11-week trial in Windsor.

Four members of the Afzaal family were murdered on June 6, 2021, at a northwest London intersection when Veltman intentionally drove into them at high speed with his pickup truck.

Killed were Talat Afzaal, 72, her son Salman Afzaal, 46, his wife Madiha Salman, 44, and their daughter Yumnah Afzaal, 15. Their son, who was nine years old at the time of the murders, was seriously injured but survived.

Their deaths sparked an unprecedented outpouring of grievance and support for the Muslim community both in London and across the country. Political leaders called the killings acts of terror.

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The trial, which was moved to Windsor to ensure Veltman’s fair trial interests, was the first time Canada’s terrorism laws were argued in front of a jury at a first-degree murder trial.

The jury was given two paths to convict Veltman of first-degree murder: one was if the jury believed there was planning and deliberation; the other was if it decided the murders were terrorist acts. The jury did not have to reveal how they reached its unanimous decision.

But the judge, Pomerance, will be asked to make findings of fact before delivering the sentence. And the prosecution will be asking for a terrorism finding.

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Along with victim impact statements, there will likely be a Gardiner hearing, which is a hearing at sentencing when the facts of the case are in dispute.

Defense lawyer Christopher Hicks told reporters at the end of Veltman’s trial that he would be arguing against a terrorism designation.

The implications of a terrorism finding don’t affect the length of the sentence – there is no longer sentence than life in prison – but it could affect how Veltman is classified in the federal prison system and what his chances are for parole after 25 years of incarceration.

The jury saw video evidence of Veltman telling the police he had randomly targeted the family “because they were Muslim” that late spring evening while driving on Hyde Park Road in his soup-up pickup truck.

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The college dropout who worked at a Strathroy egg-processing facility had immersed himself in far-right and white nationalist online content and had made plans all spring to attack Muslims “to send a message” and become an inspiration to other young white nationalists.

Veltman’s defense was that he was troubled and mentally unstable from a home-schooled upbringing in a strict Christian fundamentalist home and was unable to cope once he moved out. He claimed that the after-effects of a magic mushroom trip 40 hours before he killed the family had exacerbated his undiagnosed mental health problems, leaving him unable to resist the “urge” to drive his truck into them.

That defense, along with the assessment by forensic psychiatrist Julian Gojer, was rejected by the jury that only took six hours to bring back its guilty verdicts.

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