Van rams cab in Stockholm; police say not terror-related

STOCKHOLM — Swedish police arrested a man suspected of driving a van that rammed into a cab in central Stockholm Tuesday, in what police said was apparently not a terrorist incident.

Police said the taxi driver was injured, and that the incident was being investigated as attempted murder. There was “nothing to indicate that this is a terrorist incident,” spokesman Kjell Lindgren said.

Police say they found “nothing dangerous” in the van, which was abandoned in a southern Stockholm street a few hundred meters (yards) away from where it rammed the cab.

The van belonged to Tjuvgods.se, a courier company founded to help former convicts and recovering drug addicts back into the labour market. A company spokesman, Curre Cederstrom, said the van was discovered missing Tuesday morning.

“We had not even reported it stolen when we heard about this,” the Aftonbladet newspaper quoted Cederstrom as saying. He couldn’t be reached immediately for further comment.

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Police did not say where they arrested the suspect, but earlier said they had searched the southern part of Stockholm for the driver who ran away from the scene.

Eyewitness Per Sturesson told Aftonbladet he first thought “the driver jumped out to see what had happened” after the crash, but “he sped up and continued to drive.”

“It felt like he just wanted to get out of the truck in panic,” he said.

Swedish media say several vehicles were hit in the incident and barriers closing a street had been hit. Police declined comment on those reports.

On April 7, the driver of a stolen truck killed five pedestrians and injured 14 in central Stockholm. Lawyers for the suspect, Rakhmat Akilov, say he has admitted driving the truck 1,100 metres (3,600 feet) down a main pedestrian shopping street. That case is not expected to come to trial until next year.

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Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen, Denmark, contributed to this report.

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David Keyton, The Associated Press