Moments after a Muslim family was struck in the London, Ont., vehicle attack, the suspect vehicle could be seen driving into a nearly empty shopping mall parking lot, surveillance videos showed.
The trial of a man accused of murdering four members of the Afzaal family and injuring a fifth continued Tuesday with video evidence presented to the jury.
A roughly 15-minute-long video showed Nathaniel Veltman driving his truck into a parking lot at Cherryhill Mall and approaching a taxicab. Several London police cruisers arrive and Veltman is placed under arrest, without struggle.
Tuesday afternoon, that taxicab driver addressed the court via video and his 911 call was played for the jury.
The cab driver said the driver of the truck was wearing an army-style helmet and told him to call police.
“What’s going on? Why?” he says he asked.
“Shut up and call the cops,” the driver of the pickup truck responded, before adding that he hit someone, the cab driver testified.
Call taker Jennifer Weber took the 911 call from the cab driver, which he testified he had placed on speaker.
In the call, a second voice identifies itself to police as “Nate Veltman” and can be heard saying, “I did it on purpose. Get the f*** over here, would you?”
Weber said she had some information about the crash before even taking the call, as her colleagues had already been taking multiple calls about it.
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“The room was chaotic. Every call taker was taking back-to-back calls. Everyone was on the phone, but we still had multiple 911 calls ringing,” she testified.
“It was a very stressful, chaotic environment.”
The cab driver testified that he hung up on 911 as he saw police arrive from Oxford Street and he ran over to flag them down. As police arrived at the scene, the accused exited the truck of his own accord, got to his knees and put his hands in the air, he testified.
At that point, he says he could see that it appeared the suspect was wearing a bulletproof vest.
He also told court that the suspect told him to make a video “but I just ignored him.”
As the suspect was escorted to a police cruiser by officers, he said he passed by him and said to him, “I told you to make a video.”
The witness testified that the truck had smoke coming from the engine and that the front of the vehicle was clearly damaged.
After giving a statement to police, he went home, he said, but couldn’t sleep.
On Monday, federal prosecutor Sarah Shaikh delivered her opening statement to the jury, alleging Veltman planned his attack for three months before driving his newly purchased Dodge Ram truck directly at the Muslim family.
Salman Afzaal, 46, his 44-year-old wife Madiha Salman, their 15-year-old daughter Yumna and her 74-year-old grandmother, Talat Afzaal, were killed in the attack on June 6, 2021, which took place as the family was out for an early evening walk. The couple’s son, then aged nine, was left seriously injured but survived.
Federal prosecutors are arguing that Veltman was motivated by white nationalist beliefs.
He has pleaded not guilty to four counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder in the attack.
Eight weeks have been set aside for the trial in Windsor, Ont.
— With files from Global News’ Matthew Trevithick and Seán O’Shea as well as The Canadian Press’ Maan Alhmidi
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