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.”
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