A Canadian court on Thursday sentenced a man who deliberately ran over a Muslim family with a van in London to life in prison for four murders that occurred in June 2021.
The judge presiding over the case, Renee Pomerance, read the verdict to a packed courtroom in London, a city about 200 kilometers from Toronto, the capital of Ontario in east-central Canada, and said Nathaniel Veltman was “looking for a place in the spotlight.” when he committed the attack.
Pomerance ruled that the attack constituted an act of terrorism and that the brutality of the crime warranted the harshest punishment under Canadian law.
The collision killed a 46-year-old man, his 44-year-old wife, the couple’s 15-year-old daughter and 74-year-old grandmother. The family’s youngest son was seriously injured.
In accordance with BBCthe supremacist wanted to target the family after seeing the women wearing traditional Pakistani clothing.
The detainee chose, as the judge said, “innocent victims he did not know” and confessed to the crime to police in a gesture familiar to white supremacists.
It was the first time a Canadian jury was able to hear legal arguments about white supremacist terrorism.