A Sunday night crowd at Buford’s Backyard Beer Garden had gathered for drinks and live music when gunfire shattered the routine hum of the bar. Within minutes, panic replaced party chatter — and a 53-year-old man with a trail of incendiary online posts was dead after a shootout with police.
The man, identified as Ndiaga Diagne, carried out a shooting at Buford’s Backyard Beer Garden in Austin. Authorities believed Diagne may have been motivated by the US and Israeli missile strikes on Iran, but the FBI and local police said it was too soon to identify his motive.
The attack was being probed as a potential act of terrorism, soon after the US and Israel launched its attack on Iran.
Diagne was wearing a “Property of Allah” sweatshirt over a shirt bearing the Iranian flag at the time of the shooting, and a Quran was later recovered from his car.
The posts, apparently tied to Diagne, included woman-hating, antisemitic and racist remarks on X that were routinely flagged as “hateful conduct”. In one post last April, he wrote: “The Islamic revolution is eternal and here to stay until the end of time,” and added: “You Zionist and islamophobes can be angry all you want but you can’t do a damn thing about it, no matter what.”
In a post from October, he wrote of Loomer: “Shut the f–k up you Israel first wh–e, move to Israel you f–king bitch,” and in a separate post added: “Free ride is coming to an end, you and your Israel first acolytes fake Jews know it, so melt down all you want you ugly bitch,”
A screenshot of X posts from Laura Loomer, Evan Kilgore, and Ndiaga Diagne, with Ndiaga Diagne’s post partially redacted and flagged for violating X’s rules against hateful conduct.
He called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “evil,” on X. He also urged Gomez, who is running for Congress in Texas, to “just post your address tough girl” after she shared remarks critical of Islam, and wrote: “Trying so hard to assimilate. You ain’t one of them wet back bitch,”
Scores of his posts also railed against Christianity. In a post last November, he wrote: “So funny Islam is considered an enemy to America? Because Jesus who came out of a vagina can never be GOD, just read Mark 12:29, John 17:3, your lies, propaganda, insults and smear will not stop ISLAM, ISLAM is here to save you in this world and the hereafter,”
Separately, Diagne described Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as “evil” and criticised First Daughter Ivanka Trump after she publicly praised President Trump’s push for peace in the Middle East.
Replying to Trump’s post, he wrote: “They think they can turn GAZA into a real estate development,” and added: “They are mistaken. The atrocities of the settlers occupying Palestine will come to an end just like apartheid South Africa.”
