Man Who Killed Muslim Family Bragged to Police He Was a White Supremacist

On the evening of June 6, 2021, a 20-year-old man driving a pickup truck in downtown London, Ontario saw a Muslim family waiting to cross the street. He steered towards the family, accelerated, mounted the curb, and smashed into them. 

Salman Afzaal, 46, his wife Madiha Salman, 44, their 15-year-old daughter Yumna Afzaal, and Salman Afzaal's 74-year-old mother, Talat Afzaal, were all killed in the attack. The only survivor was the family’s nine-year-old son. Shortly thereafter Nathaniel Veltman was arrested in a nearby parking lot. He was charged with four counts of terroristic murder and one count of terroristic attempted murder. 

Veltman, now 22, pleaded not guilty, and his trial began last week in nearby Windsor, Ontario. The exact reasons and ideology of Veltman were largely unknown, thanks to little to no information—other than the attack being “motivated by hate”—being released by authorities. But any sort of misconceptions one had about the attack were shattered on Friday afternoon as the prosecutors played a video of Veltman being interviewed by police shortly after his arrest. 

In the interview, Veltman admitted that he was yet another white supremacist who was radicalized online. 

When Veltman first speaks to the investigator, just hours after his attack, he seems almost excited. The 22-year-old said he was hoping to inspire other white men to carry out attacks. In particular, he said he wanted to show other men in countries with gun control, like Canada and the U.K., that you can still carry out mass murderers without access to firearms. 

At the start of the video, Veltman told Detective Micah Bourdeau that he wanted to be “honest about what I did” because he wanted “the world to know why I did what I did.” 

“My reason to do this wasn’t to send a warning,” said Veltman in the video. “I am trying to encourage people that ‘you can do something, you don’t have to let it happen.’ I would not have done what I’ve done if not for others.” 

“Now that I did that, whether people like it or not, future people that do the same thing, they will have been inspired by me,” he added. “It will accelerate. People down the road who decide to do something similar to what I did, it will be me. I’m one of the people who gave them inspiration.”

For hours he spoke to police without a lawyer despite being offered one numerous times. 

Veltman said that he had several inspirations for the killings, the biggest being Brenton Tarrant, the man who killed 51 Muslims in Christchurch, New Zealand, but also Alexandre Bissonnette, who killed six people in a Quebec City mosque, and Timothy McVeigh, who killed 168 people in the Oklahoma City bombing. 

When asked why he did what he did, Veltman rambled on numerous white nationalist talking points, ranted about Muslim Canadians, and shared a right-wing conspiracy that the mainstream media has been covering for their actions. He said that he went down the rabbit hole in 2016 following the election of Donald Trump and that his obsession and rage built during the pandemic as he was isolated.  

Veltman said he began to plan the attack two months before he carried it out. 

“I was aiming for the parents but I knew there was going to be collateral damage,” he said. “I didn’t care (he killed the children) because it had to be brutal.”

He said he believed that he was a member of a revolution that wanted to overthrow Western governments through attacks like his.  However, due to the vacuum of information about the attack, Veltman never received much embrace or adulation within the neo-Nazi community.

In the interview footage, Veltman wore a white shirt with a cross on it. In the video he states that the shirt is a reference to the “crusades” and he specifically wore it while murdering the family, for “the joke.” 

When he spoke to the investigator for the second time, after more time had past, there was a clear change in his behaviour. He is much more withdrawn and says that he is in shock. 

“I already told you quite a bit, and since then I have been like ‘what the hell,’” said Veltman. Soon thereafter he finally asks to talk to a lawyer.

Authorities say they recovered multiple neo-Nazi manifestos in Veltman's home, including one he penned himself. It is expected prosecutors will be going through these manifestos as the trial continues this week.