U.S. President Barack Obama is honoring a police officer from a suburb of Dallas, Texas who killed two armed men in a gunfight outside a provocative contest for drawing caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.
Officer Gregory Stevens from Garland, Texas, is one of 13 police receiving the Medal of Valor from Obama on May 16 for risking their lives to protect others.
The White House is crediting Stevens with preventing a mass shooting at the May 2015 drawing event, which was organized by a group that is critical of Islam and listed as an anti-Muslim group by civil rights organizations.
Stevens, who usually works as a traffic officer, was serving as security at the event when two men with assault rifles and body armor tried to storm inside.
One of the gunmen, Elton Simpson, had linked himself to so-called Islamic State militants on social media.
The gunmen never made it inside the event. Stevens fought them off with a pistol, killing both men.
