Woman "Locked Down" At Drawing Muhammad Event Not Afraid
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GARLAND(CBSDFW.COM) - North Texans who attended the Drawing The Prophet Muhammad event at the Curtis Culwell Center Sunday told CBS11 Monday, they're determined not to let the attack keep them down.
Dorrie O'Brien was among those locked down at the event after the shooting. "I have no doubt what the reason was," O'Brien said. "It is a jihad attack. It was a terrorist attack."
While investigators haven't officially ruled Sunday night's attack to be an act of terrorism, O'Brien says she's convinced the suspects targeted the event because of the artwork depicting the prophet Muhammad. Her response is to wear the contest-winning image proudly on a t-shirt.
"You can't have a group of people who enforce their rules in this country on us," says O'Brien.
O'Brien says she slept in the shirt overnight while she waited to get to her car back from the Culwell Center which was blocked off well into Monday for the investigation. Attendees vehicles were parked in a secured area - and they weren't allowed to come back to get them until Monday.
O'Brien believes the suspects' motive was to silence those attending the event. But she says if that's what the suspects wanted, they got the opposite instead.
"It is people who don't understand where it's coming from, why they're doing it that don't understand anything who will be the first to be frightened by it and scared away, and these kind of tactics work on those kind of people," O'Brien says. "It's not going to work on us at all."
CBS11 heard similar messages from many of the people at the event Sunday night. Some said they were prepared for an attack like this and they will be prepared in the future.
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