On March 1, 2026, a mass shooting occurred at Buford's Backyard Beer Garden on West Sixth Street in downtown Austin, Texas, United States. The perpetrator, 53-year-old naturalized US citizen, Ndiaga Diagne, opened fire with a pistol from a vehicle at people inside and outside the bar before parking, and used an AR-15–style rifle to shoot at people along West Sixth Street and its connecting roads before he was fatally shot by police. Four people were killed, including the perpetrator, and 15 others were injured.
The shooting is being investigated as a possible act of terrorism related to the Iran war, and a probe into the attack found that Diagne acted alone and had not received any support from a foreign terrorist organization.
Background The West Sixth Street district is part of downtown Austin, west of the larger Sixth Street district and bounded by Congress Avenue in the east and Mopac Expressway in the west. The area features a mix of restaurants, bars, shops, and music venues. Buford's Backyard Beer Garden, where Ndiaga Diagne first opened fire, is frequented by college and university students, and was listed as one of the top 10 best bars in Austin for college students by the Austin American-Statesman in August 2025.
In 2010, the Austin Police Department (APD) established a special unit called Counter Assault Strike Teams (CAST), after a 19-year-old fired multiple shots with an AK-47 on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin before dying by suicide earlier that year. CAST units are trained specifically to respond to active shooter incidents, and have been assigned to Austin's downtown entertainment district every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
In 2021, Austin launched the "Safer Sixth Street" initiative in response to a mass shooting on June 12, 2021, when a gunman opened fire in the 400 block of East Sixth Street, killing one person and injuring 13 others. The program saw brighter streetlights installed in the area, stricter enforcement against underage drinking, and established a dedicated emergency medical services (EMS) presence on Sixth Street during weekend nights. Three years later, in October 2024, Austin's city council established the Downtown Area Command in response to multiple drownings at Lady Bird Lake during events and weekends, which stationed EMS medics and vehicles downtown during the weekend and during special events.
Just over a year prior to the shooting, Sixth Street was re-opened to vehicle traffic on weekends, reversing street closures which had been put into place to accommodate heavy foot traffic. According to Austin mayor, Kirk Watson, the change had been implemented at the recommendation of EMS medics, to allow for a more effective response to mass casualty incidents.
Shooting Shortly before the shooting, Buford's Backyard Beer Garden began preparing to close, with the operators of the bar turning off the music and turning on the lights. At around 1:58a.m., Diagne drove a black Cadillac SUV southbound on Rio Grande Street past Buford's Backyard Beer Garden, turned on the hazard lights of the vehicle and opened fire with a semi-automatic pistol on people at a patio and in front of the bar out the window of his vehicle, striking the majority of the victims in the attack. Diagne then drove westbound on West Sixth Street, before parking in a parking lot on Wood Street where he shot a man with an AR-15–style rifle in the shoulder. APD officers and Austin-Travis County Emergency Medical Services personnel arrived on the scene within 57 seconds of the first 911 calls for help.
Diagne then walked with the rifle back towards the bar, firing at people around the intersection of West Avenue and West Sixth Street. APD officers from CAST engaged with the shooter at about 2:03a.m. at the intersection after being directed to the shooter by people in the area. Police officers shot Diagne multiple times from at least two different directions as he opened fire at officers and continued to approach the bar. Diagne fell to the ground on the sidewalk at the intersection and was pronounced dead at the scene. Emergency medical technicians, who were nearby at the time of the shooting and are also embedded in police units during peak hours in Austin's entertainment district as part of the CAST program, provided medical aid to victims within 57 seconds of the beginning of the shooting, and were later aided by the Austin Fire Department.
Victims Four people were killed, including the shooter, and 15 others were injured, including two critically. Those killed were identified as 19-year-old former Texas Tech University student Ryder Harrington, 30-year-old Minnesotan mixed martial arts fighter Jorge Pederson, and 21-year-old University of Texas at Austin student Savitha Shanmugasundaram. Harrington and Shanmugasundaram were pronounced dead at the scene, and Pederson was taken off life support a day after the shooting.
According to Austin-Travis County Emergency Medical Services (ATCEMS) chief Rob Luckritz, critically injured victims were removed from the scene within 24 minutes, and all victims were removed from the scene within 47 minutes.
Perpetrator
Police identified the shooter as 53-year-old Ndiaga Diagne ( 1973 – March 1, 2026), a Pflugerville, Texas, resident and a naturalized US citizen who had originally immigrated from Senegal. Diagne also had an apartment in Austin in the Del Valle area. Diagne previously lived in The Bronx, where he was arrested by the New York Police Department for illegal vending, and in the northeast side of San Antonio for several years. Diagne came to the United States on a tourist visa on March 13, 2000, received a green card in June 2006, and obtained US citizenship in 2013.
Law enforcement and a Texas District Court judge said that Diagne had a history of mental health conditions and a history or pattern of committing domestic violence. The judge told KXAS-TV that Diagne's ex-wife filed for divorce while residing in Bexar County in September 2022 after ten years and six months of marriage. She alleged in a petition that her husband was "guilty of cruel treatment towards Petitioner of a nature that renders living together insupportable". Online records confirmed that Diagne had been married and divorced twice. Diagne first married in The Bronx on December 30, 2005, but divorced in 2008. Diagne then married again in Manhattan in March 2012, but divorced again in September 2022.
Law enforcement records show that Diagne had a criminal history dating back to his first arrest for illegal vending on June 29, 2001, in Manhattan. On January 30, 2016, Diagne was accused of critically injuring a woman in Brooklyn after purposely running her over with a company car, which was owned by Hurricane Management Corporation, on Flatbush Avenue. That same year, Diagne moved to Texas.
In 2022, a Bexar County Sheriff's Office report said that Diagne had assaulted his then-wife by grabbing her left arm and "yanking" her out of his vehicle after she attempted to hug their child and then shoved her to the ground. She reported that Diagne had told her that he would "kill her in the city" and beat her with a steering wheel locking tool. Weeks after they divorced in September 2022, authorities in Bexar County were informed that Diagne had "contacted a crisis center in New York and made a threat to harm himself", but deputies dispatched to the address on his cell phone bill found that he no longer lived at the address.
The following year, the Pflugerville Police Department received a call from an auto shop employee that Diagne had threatened him with a firearm. Police performed a traffic stop against Diagne and searched his vehicle. Investigators did not locate a firearm, but located a gray "wheel lock". After reviewing surveillance footage of the incident, they determined that the employee's demeanor during the incident "was not indicative of someone in fear of a weapon" and declined to pursue charges.
An X account which investigators believe to be connected to the shooter was created in October 2024 and last posted in December 2025. In the posts, Diagne expressed pro-Iranian, antisemitic, anti-Christian, and misogynistic views, but did not indicate Diagne's intent to commit an attack. In April 2024, amid rising tensions between Israel and Iran, Diagne replied to a post from Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, in which Araghchi criticized President Donald Trump and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, writing "THE ISLAMIC REVOLUTION IS ETERNAL ... you Zionist and islamophobes can be angry all you want but you can't do a damn thing about it no matter what". Other posts from Diagne included one in which he called Trump a "shameless clown" and another which described Netanyahu as "EVIL". In other posts, Diagne denigrated Christianity, calling the religion "fake" and using vulgar language against various foundational Christian leaders. Diagne also made several replies to far-right political activist Laura Loomer, which attacked her for her views. In October 2025, Diagne replied "Muslims worship THE ONE AND ONLY TRUE GOD" to a post which said "Muslims and Christians don't worship the same God". Two months later, Diagne replied "SPERM and have built everything in this world" to a meme which said "Women produce babies. What do men produce?".
Aftermath A Waymo driverless taxi blocked an ambulance from responding to the shooting by getting stuck blocking both lanes of traffic while attempting a u-turn. The ambulance eventually backed out from the road, and afterwards an APD officer got into the taxi and parked it inside a parking garage. ATCEMS chief Rob Luckritz said that the taxi did not impede the overall emergency response to the shooting. Waymo declined to give a statement about the incident until March 1, when the company told KVUE that they were investigating the incident. On March 11, a letter written by city council member Zohaib Qadri and co-signed by four other city council members requested that officials from Waymo attend a meeting on April 29 "to ensure stronger coordination between Waymo’s operations and Austin’s public safety agencies". The following day, city council member Paige Ellis said that Waymo had been instructed to keep their autonomous vehicles out of the area, but the company did not implement the command until approximately 30 minutes afterward. The company said that it "placed initial avoidance zones" immediately after learning of the shooting, before expanding the avoidance area after learning of "the incident's scale".
At the scheduled April 29 meeting, representatives for Waymo did not attend, but a spokesperson for the company said that it already had "substantive conversations" with city officials prior to the meeting and in a statement the company said that it would "keep working with Austin's leadership and first responder community". At the meeting, first responders highlighted problems with self-driving cars driving onto flooded roadways and bypassing train barricades and that there had been several instances where the cars would not obey officers conducting traffic, but that typically the cars followed road laws. Qadri said at the meeting that he had reached out to other autonomous vehicle companies operating in Austin and that he hoped they were "taking these lessons learned" and would continue to "work with our public safety departments".