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BREAKING: Texas Draw Muhammad event ends with shooting

Alan Gardner04 mins

The “Draw the Prophet” event scheduled today in Garland, TX ended with an attempted shooting by two men tonight. The alleged gunmen were shot by police who were at the event for extra security.

Here’s the latest from CNN:

Two men who opened fire outside a contest for Prophet Mohammad cartoons in a Dallas suburb were shot dead by police Sunday night, authorities said.

The men drove up to the Culwell Event Center in North Garland, got out of their car and began shooting just as the “Muhammad Art Exhibit and Cartoon Contest” inside was coming to an end, Garland police spokesman Joe Harns said.

…

Police who were helping with security at the event fired back, killing both gunmen, Harns said.

Earlier this week, two Jihadis on Twitter called for a Charlie Hebdo like event in Australia and the US. It’s probably too early to know whether the alleged shooters were inspired by the call for an attack. Police are not identifying the shooters.

I’ll keep the blog posted as news breaks.

Update: 05/03/2015 11pm MST: I’m trying to reconstruct the chronological events in TX. It looks like @?atawaakul “Shariah is Light” posted the following around 6:35 pm. All times below are assumed to be Central Time Zone:

The bro with me and myself have given bay’ah to Amirul Mu’mineen. May Allah accept us as mujahideen.
Make dua

#texasattack

I have NO information whether this Twitter user is associated with the attack, but it appears to be the first Tweet associated with the attempted shooting before reporter Jobin Panicker, a reporter from WFAA and who was at the event started live-tweeting the shooting.

Jobin’s first tweet about a shooting posted at 5:35pm (or what I’m assuming is 6:35pm CST)

From his Twitter feed it appears that police responded to those initial shots. Event guests were hurried into a more secure location.

Again from Jobin:

It’s fairly clear, we’re in those early hours of reporting where context and confirmed facts are overshadowed by

Here is the first video report by Jobin for WFAA (click through, no embedded video). Participants in the Prophet Muhammad event were quick to ask if the alleged assailants were Muslim. That was my first question – not for religious reasons but to ascertain if the attack was related to the previous calls for a Charlie Hebdo attack in Australia or the US.

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