An amateur car bombing followed up by a brief fire fight left only the gunman dead in a attack on a McKinney, Texas police station that bears disturbing similarities to both cartel and Islamist violence. From the Associated Press:

McKINNEY, Texas – A man drove a pickup truck loaded with ammunition into a suburban Dallas police station’s  parking lot on Tuesday, set the truck on fire and exchanged gunfire with police, officials said. The gunman was the only casualty and died at the scene.

McKinney Deputy Police Chief Scott Brewer said the man was shouting as the truck became engulfed in flames and the ammunition inside began exploding. The still-unidentified gunman then began shooting toward the police station and there was a “brief exchange of gunfire,” Brewer said.

It wasn’t immediately clear how the gunman died.

Brewer said police had no idea why the attack occurred or whether the man planned the attack alone.

“We believe there is just one shooter at this point in time,” Brewer told reporters at McKinney City Hall. The police station sits amid a large cornfield near Collin College.

One building on campus was hit by bullets, but there were no injuries, said campus spokeswoman Lisa Vasquez. The college locked its campus down to students and staff for two hours after the shooting, and has blocked access to the public, Vasquez said. Patrol cars blocked street entrances to the police department building in McKinney, a suburb of about 127,000 people 30 miles north of Dallas.

Matt Payne told television station WFAA that he was driving to work with his wife and 10-year-old son when they saw a white truck on fire. He heard gunshots and saw a man standing in a field with what appeared to be a bulletproof vest and “some sort of semiautomatic rifle,” he said. A campus police officer appeared and there was more gunfire.

Reports are that the shooter lit the ammo filled car on fire, yelled something, then took up a position in a wooded area to fire at responders. Collin College is reporting that the “suburban police station” was one of their public safety buildings, and that school was locked down for part of the day. The motive of the attack and the identity of the shooter has not yet been released. CNN has video that shows the truck.