Gunman shot dead after attacking police station

Schuyler Dixon, Associated Press

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

(08-18) 04:00 PDT Mckinney, Texas -- A 29-year-old man towed a trailer full of explosives into a suburban Dallas police station's parking lot on Tuesday, then set fire to his pickup truck and began shooting at the building in an apparent attempt to lure people outside to kill them, authorities said.

Patrick Gray Sharp died after a shootout with officers, but it's unclear whether he was killed by an officer's bullet or one of his own, McKinney Police Chief Doug Kowalski said.

No one else was hurt during the Tuesday morning clash, which led a local college to lock down its campus.

Sharp may have intended to lure people from the police station so that he could shoot at them from a field across the street where he had taken position, Kowalski said. He also may have intended to kill them by blowing up the trailer, he said.

Investigators found an assault rifle, a shotgun and a handgun on Sharp. Kowalski said Sharp fired at least 100 rounds at the police station, and that he counted at least 23 bullet strikes on the building.

Sharp was found dead after police fired an unknown number of rounds while pursuing him in a line of trees near Collin College, the chief said.

The chief said investigators haven't determined why Sharp initiated the attack in the suburb of roughly 127,000 people about 30 miles north of Dallas.

From: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/08/18/MNVD1EVH6E.DTL