"It isn't at all as serious as it first appeared," police officer Bengt Jeppsson, who led the investigation into the incident, told The Local on Thursday afternoon. "There was no crime; the investigation has been closed."
When asked by The Local if police believed the driver's actions were deliberate, he said: "No, no, we don't think so any more." In earlier comments to Sweden's Expressen newspaper, Jeppsson had said he did not believe the act was deliberate but that it could not yet be ruled out.
Two students were touched by the car, one on the wrist by the vehicle's wing mirror.
But the incident was described as a "horrifying incident" in the UK tabloid Daily Express, which misrepresented the accident by saying the car "plough[ed]" into a "crowd" of children.
The UK paper quoted the local Blekinge Läns Tidning, which reported that children had to move out of the car's path – however the Swedish phrase "kasta sig undan bilen", which in this context meant the children had to rush out of the car's path, was translated as the more emphatic "threw themselves out of the way".
Several of the responses to the Daily Express' post on Facebook made references to Islam and immigration, while others called it "fake news".
The incident was misreported on several international far-right websites, including InfoWars (which falsely stated that a "national manhunt" was under way), while another site said it was "unusual that only one Swedish news source initially reported on the incident". It was also reported on an American neo-Nazi website, which used the incident to call for "state-sponsored purging" of Muslims.
One far-right Twitter account, Peter Sweden, labelled the incident a "terrorist attack", writing: "I bet you haven't heard about this – Because it's barely been covered in the media!"
The school's staff were out on training on Thursday, but The Local spoke to Åsa Melkersson, schools operation manager in Sölvesborg municipality. She said there was "absolutely no need" for any of the students to see a doctor or visit hospital after the incident and that the students who were closest to the car "feel fine".
"The school counsellor was at school yesterday but nobody needed to speak [about the incident] and there was no one who was injured," she added. "There was one student who was just touched by the wing mirror. The teachers spoke with that student directly, and that student was more interested in talking about the activities and their pedometres."
"The students were having an outdoor day, a walk of about 15 kilometres. During the walk towards the end of the day, the children were going down a narrow path in small groups, when a car came by and was driving perhaps a bit faster than you should, and zig-zagged through the groups of children and ended up touching two children. The assessment was that it wasn't a serious incident but the teachers reported it to local police."
Melkersson said she was even mulling the idea of using the incident to teach schoolchildren about source criticism and false reporting.
The school's headteacher Martina Sjöström was participating in the day out but didn't see the incident. She told the local newspaper it was "a nasty experience, but everyone handled it calmly and well". The Local has contacted Sjöström for comment.
