An elderly white supremacist with a history of anti-Semitic tirades opened fire on Wednesday inside the Holocaust Memorial Museum, fatally wounding a security guard before being shot himself.
Tourists scattered in panic, ducked and took cover as the shots rang out in the museum’s crowded entrance shortly after noon in the heart of the US capital, not far from the White House.
The attack drew reactions of shock and sadness from US President Barack Obama and other US leaders, Israel, and a US Muslim organization.
The gunman was identified as James von Brunn, 88, a Maryland resident who has done time in prison for taking a gun into the US Federal Reserve in an apparently botched anti-Semitic attack, a federal law enforcement official said.
“It appears to be a lone gunman who entered into the museum and opened fire with what appears to be a rifle at this point,” Police Chief Cathy Lanier said.
Security guard Stephen Tyrone Johns, 39, of nearby Maryland state, was pronounced dead after being rushed to a nearby hospital, police said. The gunman was in critical condition, Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty said.
Obama — who last week became the first US president to visit the Nazi death camp in Buchenwald, Germany — expressed dismay, saying the incident underscored the need to counter prejudice.
“I am shocked and saddened by today’s shooting at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. This outrageous act reminds us that we must remain vigilant against anti-Semitism and prejudice in all its forms,” he said in a statement.
HOLOCAUST DENIAL
The Holocaust-denying Von Brunn has written books on Adolf Hitler and his views on white superiority, including Kill the Best Gentiles, which his Web site calls “the culmination of his life’s work.”
In a recent posting on his blog, he railed that “America is a Third-World racial garbage-dump — stupid, ignorant, dead-broke and terminal.”
Police and the FBI said they had no warning of the attack, which erupted at 12:50pm just inside the packed museum, which is often visited by school groups.
The FBI said it had sent a special response squad to support the police, but it had no information “to indicate threats to area landmarks.”
“An armed gunman came into the entrance and immediately opened fire striking one security guard. There was fire, gunfire returned. The gunman was hit,” Fenty said.
WITNESSES
Former US defense secretary William Cohen said he was standing outside with a museum official when the gunman entered, apparently from a red vehicle left parked in the street.
“When the shots rang out, we just ducked down and scattered,” Cohen said. “So we ran up the stairs. We didn’t know how many shooters were there, how many shots were going to continue, how many people were involved.”
Cohen had been at the museum because a play written by his wife Janet Langhart Cohen was to be staged there on Wednesday evening.
Angela Andelson, 22, visiting from San Francisco, was walking toward the museum’s exit when she heard a loud bang “like someone had dropped something.”
Then she saw a “gunman coming in [carrying] a long looking kind of gun.”
“I just ran in to one of the exhibits to try to take cover,” she said. “People were screaming and ducking down, getting on the floor, getting under benches.”
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not