Elton Simpson was an American-born Islamist militant from Illinois, raised in Westmont, who moved to Phoenix, Arizona at a young age. He converted to Islam during high school and became increasingly involved in Islamic communities in Phoenix. Simpson came under FBI scrutiny in the early 2010s for suspected ties to extremist groups, including al-Shabaab, and was convicted in 2010 of conspiracy related to providing false information about plans to travel to Somalia for jihadist purposes. He expressed public support for ISIS on social media, and his radicalization was linked to online propaganda and associations with figures like Nadir Soofi. On May 3, 2015, Simpson and Soofi carried out an armed assault on the Curtis Culwell Center in Garland, Texas, during an American Freedom Defense Initiative event featuring Prophet Muhammad cartoons, in a plot to attack the Muhammad cartoon contest. The pair, armed with AK-47s, wounded a security guard before being fatally shot by police. Simpson was killed in this 2015 Garland attack and is remembered as an ISIS sympathizer and domestic terrorism figure.