The ongoing trial of 22-year-old Nathaniel Veltman saw the unfolding of a grim tableau, as compelling evidence flowed from a 9-1-1 call taker and a taxicab driver who had initiated the distress call. The courtroom listened intently as Azzeddin Jahanghiri narrated the chilling night.
Jahangir recalled that he had been awaiting a customer, outside a nearby shopping centre. His quiet wait was disrupted by the arrival of a heavily damaged black pickup truck that parked abruptly behind his cab. To his astonishment, a confounding request was thrust upon him by the stranger in the truck.
“Summon the police. I just hit someone. I killed someone,” the stranger pleaded, revealing himself as the man in the driver’s seat of the black truck.
Jahangir recounts grabbing his phone in a panic, activating the speaker, and dialing through to the police. To the dispatch, he relayed the stranger’s message concisely. “There’s a truck here, and the driver claims to have hit someone.”
Almost as if on cue, a second voice penetrates the call, “It was me that did it, come arrest me.” This voice self-identifies as Nate Veltman. His narrative details are corroborated – his name, date of birth, but his lack of remorse is chilling. When questioned about his injuries, Veltman’s response was disconcerting, “Nope, I did it on purpose.”
He dismissed the dispatcher’s subsequent inquiry about his motives with an abrasive retort, “Get the (expletive) over here, would you?”
In addition to this intriguing conversation, Jahangir testified that Veltman commanded him to “Make a video” during his apprehension by London police. He revealed to the jury about the disconcerting sight of blood on the truck’s front lights, the damage to the hood and the smoke billowing from its engine.
Corroborating Jahanghiri’s account, the call taker Jennifer Weber, shared that a dozen similar distress calls related to the accident at Hyde Park Road and South Carriage Road had flooded the call centre by the time of Jahanghiri’s call.
