Can we get a few days without a terrorist attack, please? Westminster Bridge, St. Petersburg, Syria, when does it end? This time, Stockholm, the capital city of Sweden, was the target. Eyewitness Veronica Durango told CNN the story: a truck driver “put his foot on the gas and ran through the crowd.” She described the attack as “like driving through paper...like it was nothing.” She said she was in complete disbelief at “how a person could do such a thing.” After the attack, after killing and maiming these people, Durango said the driver “just kept on going,” leaving her “in shock.”
Police arrested a suspect north of Stockholm
Later on Friday following the attack, police arrested a man just north of Stockholm on suspicion of a “terrorist crime.” Police spokesman Mats Eriksson (Stockholm police’s own Sean Spicer) said that it is “likely” that the man arrested was the driver of the truck.
However, he added that even if he is, that would “not exclude the possibility” of future arrests related to the truck attack.
Found in the cab of the truck used in the Stockholm attack was a bag of undetonated explosives. The truck was stolen just a few minutes before it was used to mow down a crowd of people, where it had been making a delivery at a restaurant (it was a beer truck). This was reported this morning by Sweden’s public TV station SVT. The explosives were reportedly “a homemade bomb” and were not properly exploded, according to police sources, but enough damage was done to leave the truck driver with burns, which made him easier to find.
Stockholm news outlets have reported that after the truck was hijacked during a beer delivery, it was driven at high speed down Drottninggatan (translation: Queen Street) through dozens of people and crashed into a department store.
Authorities are investigating whether more people were involved
While it’s great that the attacker has potentially been caught, he was just the one driving the truck. There’s still more at play here, and there were possibly more people involved in the planning of the attack. Stockholm authorities are investigating the possibility that more than one person was involved.
Stefan Lofven, the Prime Minister of Sweden, told reporters in an official statement, “Everything indicates this is a terror attack.” Eriksson has yet to be informed of any information regarding the bag of explosives that was discovered in the cab of the truck. Apparently the prosecutor has until 12 non on Tuesday to ask the Stockholm court to send the suspect to jail.
Drottninggatan has been cordoned off
Queen Street, the street in Stockholm where the attack took place, has been cordoned off for further investigation. The truck has been removed during the night from the department store it has been wedged into. The street is being guarded by officers armed to the teeth and a handful of police vans. Mourners have arrived on the scene to show solidarity to the victims, laying down flowers at the site of the attack.
Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden and her husband Prince Daniel arrived in Stockholm to pay tribute to the victims of the attack at the scene of the crash. The princess dressed in black and cried to the point of almost being unable to speak as she gave a touching speech about the “enormous sorrow and emptiness” that she feels.
Isabella Lovin, the Deputy Prime Minister of Sweden, also paid tribute, mentioning the number of similar attacks happening across the globe, and said that “we have to stand up for our open society” in the face of Terrorism.
29-year-old Habib Jlassi, who lives in Stockholm and drives a bus at night to get by, appeared at the scene of the attack with his three-year-old daughter “to show that we are not afraid” and that “we are stronger than them.”
