Approximately twenty minutes before a shooting at an event to promote free speech in Garland, Texas, which resulted in an injured officer and two dead suspects, a radical jihadist account on Twitter posted that a person was with another individual and insinuated that he was planning to sacrifice his life to Islam’s “Allah,” using the hashtag #texasattack.
The Twitter account of the individual in question, @atawaakul, sports the username, “Shariah Is Life,” and has expressed many pro-Islamic State sentiments on its timeline. A photo of Anwar Al Awlaki, the deceased Al Qaeda master recruiter, is displayed as the Twitter user’s profile picture. On April 23, the Twitter user linked to a Breitbart News article written by Pamela Geller, who organized the “Draw Muhammad Contest” in Garland. Texas.
Rober Spencer, who runs the website Jihad Watch and helped organize the event, wrote on Twitter that he had received threats from pro-ISIS accounts prior to the shooting.
It appears as if the user had previous run-ins with the law, according to the Twitter account in question.