News Service from House Harris

US: FBI, police probe deadly US museum shooting

WASHINGTON, June 11, 2009 (AFP) - The Holocaust Memorial Museum here flew its flags at half mast on Thursday mourning the death of a security guard killed in an attack by an elderly white supremacist, as police probed the shooting.

While the museum remained close, the FBI and Washington police were investigating any leads into the attack which came without any prior warning, officials said.

Gunman, James von Brunn, 88, a long-time Holocaust denier with ties to hate groups, remained in critical condition in hospital after Wednesday's shooting at the busy museum in the heart of Washington's tourist district.

Just after midday on Wednesday, von Brunn, who once served a prison sentence for taking a gun into the US Federal Reserve, burst into the packed museum not far from the White House and opened fire.

Security guard Stephen Tyrone Johns, 39, was hit in the first burst of gunfire and died later in hospital from his injuries. Two other security guards then opened fire on Von Brunn, ending his onslaught.

US President Barack Obama -- who last week became the first US president to visit the Nazi death camp in Buchenwald, Germany -- said he was "shocked and saddened" by the shooting.

"This outrageous act reminds us that we must remain vigilant against anti-Semitism and prejudice in all its forms," he said in a statement Wednesday.

The museum expressed its "grief and shock," saying on its website that Johns "died heroically in the line of duty" and that the museum would remain closed on Thursday with flags at half-staff in his memory.

The Holocaust-denying von Brunn has written books on Adolf Hitler as well as on his conspiracy theories and views on white superiority, including "Kill the Best Gentiles," which his website 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."

The Washington Post reported that in one of his last emails, von Brunn's tone turned violent.

"It's time to kill all the Jews," he wrote, according to the Post.

The daily also reported that police had recovered a notebook from von Brunn listing several locations in the US capital, but the FBI said it had no information "to indicate threats to area landmarks."

"In these days, you never know when someone is going to grab a gun a use it in an inappropriate way," Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty said.

"The security guards saved lives by taking out the gunman," he added.

Witnesses spoke Wednesday about their horror at being caught up in an attack in a place of reverence which painfully chronicles the murders of six million Jews in the Nazi Holocaust.

"We were in the exhibit 'Remember the Children' and we heard rounds fired and through the glass doors I saw a security guard firing towards the shooter and a man on his belly on the floor and when I looked back again, we were heading toward the exit, I saw blood all over the floor," 19-year-old Maria Hernandez told AFP.

Another tourist, Mark Lippert, from Illinois said at first he thought the sounds of gunfire were part of the exhibition.

"But then these three kids came running past and the look on their faces was one of sheer horror. That's when I knew something terrible had happened," he said.

Reverent C. Welton Gaddy, president of the 185,000 member Interfaith Alliance, which promotes religious freedom and diversity, also denounced the the shooting.

"The sickening news of violence directed at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum by a reported white supremacist is extremely disturbing. When will it ever end?" Gaddy said in a statement.

"Seeking to eliminate diversity, as if 'different' is a moral category, is an offence to our democracy," he added.