From: Andrew Johnson
Date: 2009-06-10 22:50:12
Strange turn of phrase in this article… www.nytimes.com/2009… Security Guard Is Killed in Shooting at Holocaust Museum in D.C. Shawn Thew/European Pressphoto Agency Police officers suited up in body armor outside the United States National Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington after a shooting there on Wednesday. By DAVID STOUT Published: June 10, 2009 WASHINGTON An 88-year-old white supremacist with a rifle walked into the Holocaust Museum, one of the capitals most-visited sites, on Wednesday afternoon and began shooting, fatally wounding a security guard and sending tourists scrambling before he himself was shot, the authorities said. Stephen Crowley/The New York Times Police investigated the shooting. The gunman was identified by law enforcement officials as James W. von Brunn, who embraces various conspiracy theories involving Jews, blacks and other minority groups and has at times waged a personal war with the federal government. The exchange of gunfire in the entrance area of the museum, which occurred shortly before 1 p.m., sent a group of teenagers from Massachusetts, in Washington on a school trip, scurrying to safety. The gunman and the security guard were both taken to nearby George Washington University Hospital, with the gunman handcuffed to a gurney, witnesses said. The guard, who was not immediately identified, was pronounced dead a few hours after the shooting, The Associated Press reported. Washington Mayor Adrian M. Fenty said the gunman was in critical condition. Publicly, the authorities did not identify Mr. von Brunn as the suspect, but several law enforcement officials named him, and there were reports that his vehicle was found not far from the museum. The police chief, Cathy Lanier, said the gunman walked into the museums main entrance and simply began shooting without warning. Within moments, at least one security guard was returning fire, and a total of five or six shots are believed to have been fired. Mr. von Brunn, whose latest address is believed to be in Eastern Maryland, was convicted in 1983 of trying to kidnap members of the Federal Reserve Board two years earlier. In that incident, he was captured by a guard in the boards headquarters after running to the second floor, where the board was meeting. He was carrying a revolver, a hunting knife and a sawed-off shotgun in a shoulder bag, the police said. Mr. von Brunn, who lived in Lebanon, N.H., at that time, told the police he wanted to take board members hostage to focus media attention on their responsibility for high interest rates and the nations economic difficulties. He was sentenced to four years in prison for attempted kidnapping, burglary, assault and weapons charges. Law enforcement officials and others who track conspiracy theorists have long been familiar with Mr. van Brunn, in part because he maintains a Web site. He has claimed variously to be a member of Mensa, the high-I.Q. fraternity; to have played varsity football at a Midwestern college, where he earned a degree in journalism; to have been a P.T. boat captain in World War II, and to have been victimized by a court system run by Jews and black people. One or more security guards returned fire moments after the gunman began shooting, Sgt. David Schlosser of the United States Park Police said in a sidewalk news conference shortly before 2 p.m. Sergeant Schlosser said he understood that only the gunman and one security guard were wounded. Opened in 1993, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is situated near the National Mall and the Potomac River. Since its dedication, it has had nearly 30 million visitors, including more than 8 million school children and 85 heads of state, the museum says on its Web site. On Wednesday evening, members of Congress and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. are to visit the Holocaust Museum for the debut of the plan Anne and Emmett by Janet Langhard Cohen. The play is a fictional dialogue between Anne Frank, whose diary recounted her days in hiding during the Holocaust, and Emmett Till, the black teen-ager killed by white racists in 1955. Like all public buildings in the capital, the museum has heavy security, with visitors required to pass through metal detectors. But someone determined to enter a building with a firearm can sometimes do so. In July 1998, a crazed gunman killed two police officers and wounded a tourist in the Capitol.
