Three people were tragically killed and 14 were injured in a shooting at a Texas bar on Sunday, March 1.
The gunman, 53-year-old Ndiaga Diagne, was wearing clothes with an Iranian flag design and the words “Property of Allah” spread on it, coincidentally on the day after the U.S. and Israel launched an attack on Iran. He was shortly shot and killed by police in Austin, Texas.
The tragic event happened outside Buford’s Backyard Beer Garden, a popular outdoor bar, just before 2 a.m. — only a few miles away from the University of Texas.
Nathan Comeaux, a 22-year-old senior, told the Associated Press that the bar was always “full of college students, probably mostly UT kids, shoulder to shoulder, hundreds just enjoying their nights.”
Comeaux himself witnessed the shooting on Sunday. He had left the bar to grab pizza across the street about 10 minutes before the first gunshots were fired, according to the Associated Press.
Originally two people had died from the shooting, Ryder Harrington and Savitha Shan, but as of Monday, March 2 in the evening, a third person had passed. Jorge Pederson was 30-years-old and an up-and-coming mixed martial arts fighter from Minnesota, Austin police stated.
Harrington was just 19 and a student at Texas Tech University.
“It is unfair, to say the least, that my little brother was only given 19 years on this earth,” Harrington’s brother Reed wrote. “Watching the man he had become, and seeing all the lives he touched, leaves me certain that this world was robbed of a great future.”
Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis said that she believed Shan was about 24-years-old, as she was a college senior.
An assistant professor at the McCombs School of Business, Russ Finney, called Shan a “superstar” student and “light in the classroom.”
jcaramag@ramapo.edu
Featured photo courtesy of @AFpost, X