Officials ID slain gunmen at anti-Islam exhibit in Texas

Law enforcement officials on Monday identified two men who were killed Sunday after they opened fire at an event where people were invited to present cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

One of the men, whom officials identified as Elton Simpson of Phoenix, had previously been identified by the FBI as a jihadi terrorism suspect. The other man was identified as Nadir Soofi, according to law enforcement officials.

The two men drove up to the event center in Garland, Texas, at about 6:50 p.m. Sunday, stepped out of their car holding assault rifles, and began shooting, wounding a security guard, a spokesman for the Garland Police Department said.

In 2010, federal prosecutors in Arizona charged Simpson with lying to an FBI agent about his plans to travel to Somalia “for the purpose of engaging in violent jihad.” A judge found him guilty of lying to the agent, but said the government had not proved that his plan involved terrorism, and sentenced him to three years’ probation.

The FBI and the Phoenix police opened a new investigation into Simpson, 30, several months ago after he began posting on social media about the Islamic State, according to law enforcement officials. As part of that inquiry, the authorities monitored his online postings and occasionally surveilled him, the officials said.

But the authorities had no indication he planned to launch Sunday’s attack, the officials said, and the FBI had not previously investigated Simpson’s accomplice.

Officials did not give a motive for the attack Sunday evening, but drawings of Muhammad, considered offensive by many Muslims, have drawn violent responses in the past. Shortly before the shooting, messages were posted on Twitter with the hashtag #texasattack, including one saying, “May Allah accept us as mujahideen.”

Asked if the police were aware of the messages, Officer Joe Harn, a police spokesman, said, “We are, but we don’t know that it was those people that put that out.”

Police and FBI agents in Phoenix searched an apartment believed to be Simpson’s, with much of the Autumn Ridge apartment complex cordoned off through the night. At the same time, FBI agents and technicians were aiding the police in Garland, a city just outside Dallas, in their investigation.

The shooting took place outside the Curtis Culwell Center here, at an event organized by the American Freedom Defense Initiative, a New York-based group that also uses the name Stop Islamization of America. The event included a contest for the best caricature of the Prophet Muhammad, with a $10,000 top prize.

Drawings of the prophet are considered offensive in most interpretations of Islam. In January, gunmen in Paris attacked the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a French satirical newspaper known for printing caricatures of the prophet, killing 12 people. The 2005 publication of cartoons of Muhammad in a Danish newspaper prompted demonstrations and drew death threats, and four men were convicted of plotting a retaliatory attack on the newspaper.

Harn said that the police and organizers had planned for months for the heavy security around the event, which about 200 people attended, and that organizers paid $10,000 for added protection. Security included uniformed Garland police and school district officers, SWAT team and bomb squad officers, and representatives of the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Geert Wilders, an anti-Islam leader in the Netherlands for the Party for Freedom, attended the event and delivered a speech. After the attack, he wrote “never surrender to terrorism!” in a Twitter post, and he posted a picture of himself with what he said were SWAT forces taken before the gunmen opened fire.

Pamela Geller, an organizer of the event who runs a website that attacks Islam, said the group decided to hold the event in the Curtis Culwell Center because members had heard that a Muslim group had a conference in the same room after the attack on the Charlie Hebdo office.

Geller described Sunday’s event as pro-free speech and said that Muslims had become a “special class” that Americans were no longer allowed to offend.

Harn said the two gunmen stopped their car near the center’s west parking lot entrance, which was blocked by a police car, as the event was drawing to a close. In the police car were a Garland Police traffic officer and a Garland Independent School District security officer, who was unarmed. The officers got out of their car.

“Two men exited the dark color sedan, both of them had assault rifles, and came around the back of the car and started shooting at the police car,” he said. He said officers from around the center converged on the scene within seconds, but by then the traffic officer had already killed the gunmen.

“Because of the way we were set up, we were able to stop those men before they were able to penetrate the area and shoot anybody else, or attempt to shoot anyone else,” Harn added.

He said that one police officer, whom he did not name, returned fire with his pistol, killing both gunmen.

“He did a very good job, and probably saved lives,” Harn said at a news conference Monday. Of the attackers, he said, “I was told they did have body armor; I don’t know the extent of what the body armor was.”

The school district said in a statement that its security officer, Bruce Joiner, was shot in the ankle and taken to a hospital. He was later released.

The police, fearing that the gunmen’s car might contain an explosive device, evacuated not only the center, but also a nearby Hyatt hotel, and several stores and other businesses. They used small explosive charges to open the car trunk and detonate several suspicious objects, before concluding that there was no bomb.

A live video stream of the Garland event on the organizer’s website recorded the moment when the crowd was interrupted by a private security guard in military fatigues, who bounded onto the stage to announce that there had been a shooting outside. “Were the suspects Muslim?” a man shouted.

“I have no idea right now,” said the man in fatigues.

In Phoenix, people living in the Autumn Ridge complex were roused around midnight by the police knocking on their doors, ordering residents to evacuate. Cheryl Klein said she and her wife, Cherielle Rice, stepped out of their apartment, in a building across from Simpson’s, to find the area swarmed by officers in SWAT gear with assault rifles.

The Phoenix police, Homeland Security agents and FBI agents entered Simpson’s apartment about 3 a.m. local time, and allowed residents back into their homes about 4:30 a.m.

Neighbors said Simpson lived on the first floor of one of the buildings on the east side of the complex, a one-bedroom unit that he occasionally shared with roommates.

Klein said they had seen Simpson occasionally, doing mundane tasks like taking out the trash, walking to his car or picking up the mail. “There was never any reason to suspect anything,” she said.

Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas said in a statement late Sunday evening that officials were working to determine “the cause and scope of the senseless attack.”

Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, the chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security who was on a trip in Israel, described the shooting as an attack on freedom of expression.

“From the capitals of Europe to the streets of Garland, Texas, we have been confronted by attackers who cannot tolerate our open society,” McCaul said in a statement.

This story was originally published May 3, 2015 at 8:34 PM with the headline "Officials ID slain gunmen at anti-Islam exhibit in Texas."