The man accused of killing four members of a Muslim family in an alleged act of terrorism told a jury Friday that his mind had been “corrupted” by online conspiracy theories and that he eventually developed the desire to engage in an act of violence.
During his second day of testimony at his trial, Nathaniel Veltman told the court that as his mental state deteriorated during the pandemic, he began consuming more online content that included unfounded COVID conspiracies -19 and Muslims.
“This content began to distort my view of the world,” he argued. This was starting to cause boiling anger. »
The 22-year-old said he was always drawn to “anything fringe and conspiratorial” but initially didn’t identify with much of the content he watched.
He claimed he tried to block some of the websites he visited with an app originally intended to block access to pornography, and even deleted or destroyed some of his electronic devices, but he kept coming back to the disturbing content. He said he became “addicted” to it.
“Slowly, I became desensitized to the offensive comments,” he testified.
On the stand in the Windsor, Ont., courtroom where the trial is taking place, Mr. Veltman detailed what he described as a process of mental decline that began when he began spending many time on the web during the first months of the pandemic.
Over time and after two failed attempts to end his life in March 2021, Mr. Veltman said things had changed.
“I no longer tried to avoid things that I knew triggered something in me. I felt like I had nothing to lose,” he said.
Mr. Veltman said his suicidal thoughts “suddenly transformed into something else.”
PHOTO DAX MELMER, CANADIAN PRESS ARCHIVES
Nathaniel Veltman
“ [J’avais] the desire to engage in an act of violence and avenge these things that I was seeing,” he said, referring to far-right websites spreading baseless conspiracy theories about Muslims.
Mr. Veltman is accused of deliberately hitting the Afzaal family with his truck in June 2021, while the family members were walking on the streets of London, Ontario.
Salman Afzaal, 46, his 44-year-old wife Madiha Salman, their 15-year-old daughter Yumna and his 74-year-old grandmother Talat Afzaal were killed in the attack. The couple’s nine-year-old son was seriously injured but survived.
Mr. Veltman has pleaded not guilty to four counts of first degree murder and one count of attempted murder.
Magic mushroom consumption
Jurors have already seen a video of Mr. Veltman telling a detective that his attack was motivated by white nationalist beliefs. The Crown argued that Mr. Veltman had been planning an attack for three months and that his actions constituted terrorism.
Mr. Veltman also told the jury Friday about two cases in which he took psilocybin, better known as magic mushrooms, to try to cope with his situation.
He said he took a “large” amount of magic mushrooms in April 2020, which caused him to hear “demonic voices” and writhe on the ground.
“I forgot who I was, I forgot where I lived, I forgot what planet I was on. It was like a complete erasure of memory,” he said.
Mr Veltman said he also consumed magic mushrooms on June 5, 2021, a day after his grandmother died and went to view her body.
The accused said he was distraught over the death of the woman he considered his “surrogate” mother and that he pressured a friend to give him more drugs than what he friend thought it was safe for him. He said he was very upset at the time and wanted to “escape” by taking psilocybin.
The attack on the Afzaal family took place on June 6, 2021.
Mr 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 11e year (the equivalent of secondary five in Quebec) and that isolation from the wider community had made him socially awkward and attracted to “outcasts” and “bad” crowds later in his life.
This is the first case in which Canada’s terrorism laws have been put to a jury in a first-degree murder trial.