ISIS has claimed responsibility for the terror attack that ended with a security guard getting shot in the ankle and two gunman with assault rifles being taken out by a Garland cop's service pistol, according to media reports.
"We tell America that what is coming will be even bigger and more bitter, and that you will see the soldiers of the Islamic State do terrible things," the group is reported to have said on its radio station, al-Bayan.
That declaration would be necessarily correct, we guess. Alleged terror attacks don't really get much smaller.
If the al-Bayan statement is true, Sunday night's incident would be the first ISIS-inspired incident on United States soil. The two dead shooters Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi were roommates in Phoenix. Simpson, a convert to Islam, had been monitored by the FBI as far back as 2006. In 2010 he was given probation for lying to a federal agent, but the feds couldn't prove their accusation that Simpson had intended to travel to Somalia to wage jihad. Soofi was not being monitored by the FBI, according to CNN, and was born in Garland.
According to media reports, Simpson is believed by the FBI to have tweeted "The bro with me and myself have given bay'ah to Amirul Mu'mineen. May Allah accept us as mujahideen. Make dua" with the hashtag #texasattack on Sunday before the shooting. A bay'ah is an oath of allegiance to a leader. Amirul Mu'mineen is, according to reports, a misspelling of a title given to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi when he was named head of the Islamic State in Iraq.
