Three people are dead after a delivery truck driver purposefully drove into a crowd of people in the German city of Münster, with up to 50 others injured. The attack, which occurred at around 3:30 p.m. local time, ended with the driver taking his own life with a gun.
According to CNN, authorities are most certainly treating this incident as one that was pre-planned, although they have not yet referred to it as terrorism. Andreas Boden, a police spokesman for the city of Münster, says that the motive behind the attack has yet to be revealed, as does the driver's identity. Local police report that the vehicle itself was driven onto a restaurant's open terrace.
There is speculation that the unidentified culprit chose Münster because it is a very popular area on the weekends, and therefore was likely to be crowded and thus maximize potential victims. It has a population of just over 310,000 and is home to such world-renown landmarks as the 13th-century St. Paulus Dom cathedral, the late medieval St. Lamberti Church, and Prinzipalmarkt square. The city is also known as the "cycling capital of Germany," a nickname residents provided themselves and is home to several universities. The zoo and art museum, as well as the historic city hall, also draw quite a crowd during the warmer months.
