Accused killer of Muslim family had 'delusional' beliefs but normal assessments, psychiatrist testifies

Warning: This story contains disturbing details.

A psychiatrist spoke on the role mental illness and magic mushrooms played in the 2021 attack on a Muslim family in London, Ont., as he began testifying at the murder-terror trial of Nathaniel Veltman.  

Gojer assessed the accused, as did social workers and psychologists, and he ordered a brain scan, the doctor testified in Ontario Superior Court in Windsor on Wednesday. 

The accused has pleaded not guilty to four counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder as well as associated terror charges. He was diagnosed by Gojer with several mental illnesses, but his MRI and neuropsychological assessments were deemed normal, the doctor said. 

"There were no abnormalities," Gojer said.

The accused didn't suffer from psychosis, though he had "brief psychotic episodes that were not constant or enduring," he added. 

"Some of his beliefs were of delusional intensity," Gojer said. 

Veltman has admitted to driving his pickup truck into five members of the Afzaal family on June 6, 2021, and told police he targeted them because they were Muslim, a fact he knew based on the clothes they were wearing. Prosecutors say he was ideologically motivated, so he also faces terrorism charges. 

The family was out for an evening walk in suburban London amid pandemic lockdowns at the time of the attack. Yumnah Afzaal, 15, her parents Madiha Salman, 44, and Salman Afzaal, 46, and family matriarch Talat Afzaal, 74, were killed. A nine-year-old boy was seriously injured but survived. 

Much of the morning in court was spent going over Gojer's extensive experience in forensic psychiatry and specifically his expertise in developmental and personality disorders, as well as the psychopharmacology of hallucinogens, including magic mushrooms. 

"Mental illness is a broad definition of behaviours that a person might manifest as problems related to one's emotions, impulsive disorders, urges to act, as well as problems relating to others and to one's self," he told the jury. "If it reaches a problem or is so grossly disproportionate to the average person, we call it a mental illness."

Hallucinogens, as other drugs, can trigger or worsen mental disorders, Gojer added. 

Accused has multiple mental illnesses, doc says

In order to reach his diagnoses, Gojer said he starts with the patient, then talks to different people in their life and looks at records, such as school and medical records. In this case, a social worker spoke to the accused's father, Mark Veltman, who suffers from depression. 

"We also have information from police and from the Crown," the psychiatrist said. 

Gojer spoke to Veltman while the accused was in jail in London, as well as in Windsor, and for a two-week period when he was an in-patient at Royal Ottawa Hospital. He also consulted police reports and had psychologists speak to the accused. 

"I was not present when he testified, but I watched his testimony over Zoom," Gojer added. 

"It's extremely important to understand the antecedents to the events that led up to the offence. It's about connecting the dots," he said. "It's not every day that one sees a homicide where multiple mental illnesses co-exist, as well as the use of magic mushrooms." 

'I wasn't fully there,' accused said

The accused's obsessive compulsive disorder was not psychotic, and his thoughts would "wax and wane," Gojer said. "When severely depressed, they were close to being psychotic in nature, but only for brief moments in time." 

The accused was noted as having above-average intelligence, Gojer added. 

Wednesday's testimony lasted only half a day because of a scheduling conflict.

On Tuesday, much of the day was taken up by legal wrangling and there was a brief appearance by Veltman, who concluded his testimony with several clarification answers to questions from defence lawyer Christopher Hicks. 

The accused clarified he told a jail psychiatrist on June 9, 2021, that he felt like he had come out of a dream-like state the day before, two days after the attack.

"I spoke to the doctor about using mushrooms on the Saturday, and that it felt like I was in a dream and that I slowly came back to reality on June 8," the accused told the court. "I told him that before being arrested, I had been feeling increasingly depersonalized and detached from reality. I wasn't fully in my body. I wasn't fully there." 

Court has heard the accused's gas pedal was 100 per cent depressed at the time of the crash. In the months before, he wrote a manifesto called "A White Awakening" and was spending more than 12 hours a day looking at far-right websites that included white nationalist content and videos of mass shootings.

Proceedings in the trial began Sept. 11. Testimony continues Thursday.