Backlash After Swedish Department Store Announces Terror Attack ‘Damaged Goods’ Sale

STOCKHOLM (AP) — The Swedish department store that was rammed by a stolen beer truck, leaving four people dead and 15 injured in Stockholm, said Sunday it regrets an announcement that it would reopen two days after the deadly attack to sell damaged goods at a “reduced price.”

The Ahlens department store apologized “for a bad decision” in a statement on its Facebook page. It said its motivation “was born out of the idea of standing up for transparency and not allowing evil forces take control of our lives.”

The store said it would reopen Monday “without any damaged goods.”

A fire broke out Friday afternoon at the store after the truck smashed into shoppers at its entrance on Stockholm’s pedestrian Drottninggatan street. It was quickly put out by firefighters.

Police have arrested a 39-year-old native of Uzbekistan and say they believe he deliberately drove the truck into shoppers.

Overnight, Swedish media reported police raids to bring other people in for questioning as authorities investigated the deadliest attack in Stockholm in years. Sweden’s SAPO security police said it was working to find “any abettor or network involved in the attack.”

“We have a lot of people who are being taken to police offices throughout Stockholm for questioning,” police spokesman Kjell Lindgren told The Associated Press. “But no one has been put into custody or arrested” beside man from Uzbekistan.

He added that the probe demands that police do “all the things that are necessary to make a good investigation. That means we are going to continue to check objects, people, vehicles and so on.@

Stockholm city officials, meanwhile, planned to move thousands of flowers at a makeshift memorial to a nearby square after an aluminum fence outside the Ahlens department store was overwhelmed with tributes and threatened to collapse, Sweden’s TT news agency said.

The fence was put up to keep people away from the broken glass and twisted metal at the attack site, and to allow forensic experts and police to gather evidence.

Thousands of people have come to the site, including the prime minister and members of Sweden’s royal family, to lay flowers and light candles in memory of the truck attack victims.