Updated May 4, 4:40 a.m. EDT:
Listen to audio of the police officer telling the event attendees about the gunmen. The officer was asked if the attackers were Muslim.
Updated May 4, 1:43 a.m. EDT:
According to CNN, police spokesman Joe Harns said that 200 people attended the event. The shooting took place at 7 p.m. local time (8 p.m. EDT).
The security guard that was shot in the ankle has been identified as Bruce Joiner.
"The Islamic jihadis are determined to suppress our freedom of speech violently. They struck in Paris and Copenhagen recently, and now in Texas," event organizer Pamela Geller told CNN earlier. "This incident shows how much needed our event really was. The freedom of speech is under violent assault here in our nation. The question now before us -- will we stand and defend it, or bow to violence, thuggery, and savagery?"
Depicting Prophet Mohammad is considered an affront to Islam and there have been violent reactions to cartoon images in the past, like the shooting at the French satirist paper, Charlie Hebdo, in January. An attack in Denmark followed. An American cartoonist has been in hiding for the past four years because she is considered a prime target for execution by Islamic extremists.
Geller said she intentionally booked the Culwell Center because "Stand With the Prophet" was held at the same site earlier this year. Culwell Center Director John Wilborn has not turned down an event due to content in his six years in that position. "Because it is operated through district funds, which are also state and federal, we have to maintain a nondiscriminatory approach to those who seek to lease that facility," Garland Independent School District Communications Director Chris Moore told the Dallas Morning News. "It's the same for any organization."
Original article:
Two men opened fire in North Garland, Texas (a suburb of Dallas) outside a contest for cartoon drawings of Prophet Mohammad on Sunday night. The gunmen were shot and killed by police.
The gunmen drove to the Culwell Event Center, got out of their car and starting spraying the area with bullets just as the "Muhammad Art Exhibit and Cartoon Contest" was nearing its end, Garland police spokesman Joe Harns said, according to CNN.
An unarmed security guard was hit in the leg. He was taken to a hospital, treated and released. Police already at the event for security shot back and killed both gunmen, according to CNN.
"The first suspect was shot immediately," Garland Mayor Douglas Athas said, according to CNN. "The second suspect was wounded and reached for his backpack. He was shot again."
"We have no other indication that anyone else was involved," Athas added.
The FBI backed up local authorities as they searched for explosives in the gunmen's vehicle and in the area that was blocked off by officers. Businesses in the vicinity were evacuated.
By 11:35 p.m. EDT., the bomb squad was still checking the area for explosives. "It's a very slow, tedious operation that goes on," Harns said, according to CNN. "We were prepared for something like this."
According to the Rowlett/Sachse Scanner, that writes that its objective is "to inform the people of Rowlett and Sachse," wrote that the area is not secure and ISIS may take responsibility.
The cartoon contest was sponsored by the American Freedom Defense Initiative. The Southern Poverty Law Center - which tracks hate groups - considers the group anti-Muslim. The American Freedom Defense Initiative said it received more than 350 cartoon submissions and the winning prize was $10,000. About 40 people were present during the shooting.
The American Freedom Defense Initiative's president, Pamela Geller, was called "the anti-Muslim movement's most visible and flamboyant figurehead," by the Southern Poverty Law Center. After the shooting, Geller wrote on her website: "This is a war. This is war on free speech."
The keynote speaker was right-wing Dutch politician Geert Wilders who was put on an al Qaeda hit list for his film "Fitna." The film, released online in 2008, superimposed terrorist acts over verses from the Quran, according to CNN. Wilders faced charges of inciting discrimination, but was cleared in 2011.
Imam Zia Sheikh, a Muslim leader in Dallas, Tweeted: "The community stayed away from event. Seems like a lone wolf type of attack. Just what we didn't want."
