A STOLEN gas bottle delivery lorry travelling down the wrong side of the road at high speed, shedding its cargo on the highway caused panic in Barcelona this morning and police had to open fire to stop the driver.
The vehicle ploughed through cars near the Ciutadella Park and França station without stopping after having been stolen on the C/ Vilà Vilà whilst its legal driver was dropping off butane gas tanks.
It then entered the coastal ringroad, or Ronda Litoral, at junction 22 in the wrong direction and well above the speed limit, causing cars to swerve to avoid a head-on crash.
Several cars were damaged and a woman was injured as gas bottles fell off the back of the lorry, with around 90 of them having been dropped on the road by the time the runaway driver was caught.
Barcelona's city police, the Guardia Urbana, and the regional military police, the Mossos d'Esquadra fired shots to scare the lorry thief into stopping.
He put up such a fight when they tried to handcuff him that three officers were needed to pin him down.
Despite the scuffle, the hijacker was uninjured.
Interior minister Juan Ignacio Zoido was quick to reassure the public that the terrifying incident was not terrorism-motivated.
The man who stole the lorry is a 32-year-old Swedish national known to have psychiatric problems, and who has been admitted to a mental health ward.
Officers are investigating whether he had taken mind-altering drugs before stealing the lorry.
He has no criminal record and was not carrying any weapons, and is said to have no fixed address in Spain.
Police suspect he had not long arrived in Barcelona, possibly only hours earlier, and say his passport appeared to be genuine and unaltered.
They have not been able to question him as he claimed not to speak Spanish, catalán or even English, despite the latter being almost universally understood in Sweden.
Witnesses described the accused as driving 'obsessively' and 'with no attempt to avoid pedestrians in his path', but said he was not aiming intentionally at anyone or anything.
Photograph from interior minister Juan Ignacio Zoido's Twitter page (@zoidoJI)
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