A man found guilty of using his pickup truck to kill four members of a Muslim family was sentenced Thursday to life in prison as a Canadian judge ruled that the actions of the admitted white nationalist amounted to terrorism.

Nathaniel Veltman has also been sentenced to a concurrent life sentence for the attempted murder of a boy who survived the 2021 attack.

Veltman, 23, was found guilty in November of four counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder for hitting the Afzaal family with his truck while they were out for a walk.

Prosecutors argued that Veltman purposely ran his truck into the Afzaal family while they were out for a walk on June 6, 2021, to intimidate Muslims into leaving Canada. The defense sought to show he wasn’t criminally liable saying he had mental health problems.

    • dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      4 months ago

      He tried to claim that his actions were due to white nationalism, that he read stuff on the internet that made him want to kill, but then he changed his story to “I took psilocybin mushrooms 2 days ago and I didn’t know what I was doing!” He’s a loser piece of shit with a fucked up looking head.

    • MinorLaceration@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      And ruined the life of the 9 year old boy who survived the attack, despite being seriously injured and watching his family members die.

      • sigmaklimgrindset
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        4 months ago

        Locals that went to the funeral talked about how sad it was to watch an 11 year old boy all alone in a wheelchair roll himself from coffin to coffin to say goodbye to his family.

        I read his victim impact statement, and man it made me tear up:

        Me and Yumnah had plans that when she finally got her driver’s licence, she’d drive me around. She said it would cost 25 cents per drive. Now I’ll never be able to see that.

        I wouldn’t be able to have some of the delicious food that my family used to make like Yumnah’s pasta, Ami’s all around food (because nothing was better than the other), Baba’s butter chicken and Dadi-Jaan’s potato wedges," the boy wrote.

        It’s short and worth the full read tbh..

          • sigmaklimgrindset
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            4 months ago

            Weird, it works fine for me on desktop, but I replaced it with a new link that hopefully works.

            And yeah, the attack happened in 2021, so the boy would be 11-12 today, and would have been 9 at the funeral. Just tragic.

  • YurkshireLad@lemmy.ca
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    4 months ago

    He should never be allowed to leave prison. Except to move to another prison. 🤬

  • dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    4 months ago

    None of the Canadian news outlets are fully reporting the details of this story such as the concurrent nature of the life sentences. Somehow AP got all the facts.

    • otp@sh.itjust.works
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      4 months ago

      What aspect were the Canadian news outlets missing? Life sentences are concurrent in Canada; that’s just how it works. It isn’t really necessary to report something like that to a domestic audience.

      • dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        4 months ago

        TIL that life sentences are by default concurrent in Canada, although I would say the nature of labelling it “terrorism” was never explored either. A lot of people became confused, thinking he was charged with terrorism, when it fact, it was just a ruling by the judge and it should be used against him in 25 years time when he’s up for parole.

  • Son_of_dad@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    He should have gotten out of the car and cannibalized one of his victims, they’d have given him some pills and a slap on the wrist