Williams-Sonoma Stores Pull Pressure Cookers Off Shelves In Boston Area

In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing, some Williams-Sonoma stores in the city have pulled pressure cookers off shelves, the company confirmed to The Huffington Post on Thursday.

The decision to temporarily stop selling the cooking device, which is meant to cook food at a high pressure, was not a corporate-wide decision, Chief Marketing Officer Pat Connolly told HuffPost. Connolly said that some managers of stores near the location of the bombing decided to pull the item.

"Some of them had friends and relatives who were impacted by everything," he added.

Pressure cookers were what Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the bombing suspects, used to construct the bombs that killed three and injured more than 200 others on April 15, according to investigators.

Days after the bombing, Nike decided to stop selling a baseball-themed T-shirt emblazoned with the phrase "Boston Massacre."

Similarly, in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, Walmart pulled the Bushmaster Patrolman's Carbine M4A3 Rifle off of its website. The rifle is similar to the one reportedly used by Adam Lanza to kill 26 people.