His crime sparked dread, disgust and misunderstanding in Canada.
Nathaniel Veltman, the young man accused of having deliberately mowed down and killed four members of a Muslim family on Sunday in the southwest of the country, appeared before a judge for the first time on Thursday from his prison in a procedural hearing .
Dressed in an orange t-shirt, wearing a mask, short hair, he has simply declined his identity and answered a few questions about his defense, but the first elements of his personality and his arrest begin to emerge as a new audience is scheduled for Monday.
20-year-old Nathaniel Veltman has no criminal record or known affiliation with an extremist organization.
He was charged earlier this week with four counts of premeditated murder and attempted murder.
If found guilty, he faces life imprisonment.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and several leaders of the Muslim community have denounced a "terrorist attack".
A qualification shared by the authorities and the Minister of Public Safety, Bill Blair, who said Thursday on CBC that "the police are carrying out the investigation considering that it is a terrorist act".
Earlier in the week the local police chief in charge of the investigation, Stephen Williams, had already mentioned religious motives and Islamophobia to justify the motives of the accused.
Sunday evening in London, 200 km southwest of Toronto,
Veltman had deliberately run into the Afzaal family with his pickup.
An act "premeditated and planned, motivated by hatred", according to the police.
Five members of this family had been mowed down while waiting to cross at a crossroads.
The attack claimed the lives of three generations of the family, originally from Pakistan and living in Canada since 2007: Madiha, 44, a doctoral student in the environmental field, her husband Salman, a 46-year-old physiotherapist, their daughter Yumna, 15, and her grandmother Talat, 74.
The couple's 9-year-old son Fayez was seriously injured but his life is not in danger.
Still hospitalized, the young orphan knows that his family has been wiped out, CBC reported on Thursday.
Swastikas
The perpetrator was arrested seven kilometers away in front of a shopping center, where a taxi driver came face to face with him, according to the latter's employer quoted by Canadian media. The suspect parked his pickup behind the car of the taxi driver, himself a Muslim. “He shouted at our colleague to call the police because he had killed someone,” said company president Hasan Savehilaghi.
The suspect was wearing a swastika t-shirt, a bulletproof vest and a military helmet, and he was laughing during his arrest, according to the driver quoted by his boss.
Veltman was described in 2016 as angry and treated for mental disorder, in court documents dating back to his parents' divorce and cited by Canadian media.
He and his twin sister are the eldest in a family of six, now between 10 and 20 years old.
On Thursday, his father Mark Veltman, reacting for the first time, expressed his "horror".
"I was shocked and horrified at the highest point to learn of the unspeakable crime committed last weekend," he said in a statement to several media.
“No word will suffice to express my immense grief for the victims of this senseless act.
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On Tuesday evening, several thousand people attended an outdoor funeral vigil in London in tribute to the victims, in the presence of many political leaders including Mr. Trudeau. The people of London have also been invited to join in the funeral for the victims, which will be celebrated and televised on Saturday at 1:30 p.m. local (5:30 p.m. GMT), according to the funeral home.