Swedish police arrest man suspected of deadly truck attack

Media reports emerge of explosive device in wreckage of vehicle

STOCKHOLM — Swedish police said Saturday that they believe they have captured the man accused of turning a beer truck into a weapon a day earlier by driving it into a crowd of pedestrians in a rampage that left four people dead.

Authorities did not divulge the man’s name but said he is a 39-year-old from Uzbekistan who had been known to security services as “a marginal character” for the past year. Police said that when they first investigated him, they had found no connections to extremism. Authorities did not say when the man had come to Sweden.

The arrest came Friday night when officers apprehended a suspect in the northern Stockholm suburbs who matched the description of a man seen in surveillance footage earlier in the day. Police initially said they were unsure whether the man they had arrested was involved in the attack.

But their confidence grew overnight, and in an early afternoon news conference Saturday, authorities said they were all but certain that they had caught the assailant.

Sweden’s prime minister said Friday that the attack was “an act of terrorism,” though officials have not commented on an exact motive.

Swedish media outlets reported Saturday that there was a homemade explosive device discovered in the mangled wreckage of the truck, which was towed overnight from the upscale shopping district that on Friday afternoon became a scene of carnage.

National Police Chief Dan Eliasson said that “a device that did not belong there was found in the truck.” But officials said it was unclear whether it was a bomb.

With the attack, which also injured 15 others, Stockholm joined a growing list of major European cities where vehicles have been turned into weapons over the past year, including Nice, France, Berlin and London.

In the minutes after the rampage, the driver escaped the smoky and blood-streaked scene. Throughout the afternoon and evening, the driver was the subject of an intensive manhunt as helicopters searched from the skies, heavily armed officers were deployed through normally tranquil neighborhoods and security at borders was tightened.

Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said at a Friday evening news conference that the country would not be intimidated, and that the government would do “whatever it takes” for the public to feel safe.

Behind the tough words, however, was an acknowledgment from security officials that attacks like Friday’s are nearly impossible to stop.

“There is no way to really prevent this kind of thing,” said Stefan Hector, an official with Sweden’s national police.

Until Friday, Sweden had been spared the sort of masscasualty attacks that have afflicted other countries across Europe in recent years. The attack was the first major apparent terrorist strike in Stockholm, a peaceful city set among peninsulas and islands near the Baltic Sea.

It underscores a growing vulnerability that Sweden had long ignored, said Magnus Ranstorp, a terrorism researcher at the Swedish Defense University. “Sweden had been somewhat like an ostrich,” Ranstorp said. “People were reluctant to talk about it and admit there was a problem.”

The assailant’s rampage in Stockholm apparently began with an idling truck.

Rose-Marie Hertzman, a spokeswoman for the Swedish brewery company Spendrups, said the truck used in the attack was stolen from one of the firm’s drivers about 2:30 p.m. — about a half-hour before the rampage.

“The driver was unloading, and a man came running and took the truck and drove away,” she said.

Minutes later, the force of the truck crashing into the upscale Ahlens City retail hub sparked a fire and sent smoke billowing above one of the city’s premier shopping districts. One witness described seeing a woman with a severed foot and people either running in panic or staying to help amid pools of blood.

Gahangir Sarvari, 56, an Iranian refugee, was about 50 yards from the attack and said he initially thought it was a traffic accident. Then he saw the trail of carnage, which included a young woman whose legs were severed.

“I can never forget when we made eye contact,” he said. “I was screaming at people why they didn’t call the police and screaming at people who were taking photos with their phones. I didn’t know what to do.”

The attack comes just a little over two weeks after a man plowed an SUV into a crowd of pedestrians on a London bridge, then stabbed a police officer at the gates of Parliament. That assailant killed five, including a woman who died Thursday of injuries she received when she was knocked off the bridge and into the River Thames.

Last year, trucks were also used in deadly rampages through crowds at a Berlin Christmas market and along Nice’s waterfront during France’s Bastille Day in July.