Alleged white supremacist opens fire in US Holocaust Museum

Jun 10, 2009, 19:56 GMT

Police and SWAT team officers stage outside the US Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC after a gunman opened fire at the museum on 10 June 2009. Police say a man brought a rifle into the museum and began firing, exchanging fire with a security guard before being shot and subdued. EPA/MATTHEW CAVANAUGH

Washington - A lone gunman with believed connections to white supremacist groups opened fire in the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington on Wednesday.

City and law enforcement authorities told reporters they could not confirm the gunman's identity or any connections to anti-Semitic groups, but media reports said he was believed to be known as a white supremacist James W von Brunn.

The armed man carrying a long rifle entered the museum just blocks from the National Mall and Washington Monument before 1 pm (1700) GMT and immediately fired on one of the facility's armed security guards just inside the museum's entrance, Washington Police Chief Cathy Lanier told reporters.

Two security guards returned fire and one security guard and the gunman were wounded.

Von Brunn has written numerous anti-Semitic articles posted online, including a book called Kill the Best Gentiles, which he calls 'a new hard-hitting expose of the Jewish conspiracy to destroy the white gene pool.'

Von Brunn on a website claims to have served in World War II, to have worked for a New York advertising agency and to belong to Mensa, the high-IQ society.

The guard was in grave condition and the alleged gunman in serious condition at a nearby hospital, Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty said.

Tourist Mark Lippert who was visiting the museum told the German Press Agency dpa that he heard several loud pops ring out while he was in a nearby room inside the building.

He and his fiancee visiting from Spring Valley, Illinois, saw kids running into the exhibit hall and could tell from the looks on their faces that something was wrong, he said. Lippert pushed opened the emergency exit, which took several seconds to open.

'It was the longest 15 seconds of my life,' he said.

Other tourists who were in the museum told dpa they were kept inside an exhibit by guards where they took shelter for about 20 minutes before leaving through the museum's emergency exit. Another group hid inside the museum's theatre, where a Holocaust survivor was preparing to a give a speech.

Charles Towater, 73, of Tampa, Florida, said he saw a body lying on the pavement outside the entrance as he approached the museum just before police arrived.

Mayor Fenty stressed the gunman appeared to have acted alone and that there were no threats received by the museum prior to the incident.

'This is an extremely isolated incident,' he said, noting that the security guards reacted just as they were trained to do.

'In these days in time you never know when someone is going to grab a gun and use it in an inappropriate way.'

After the incident, police blocked traffic for several blocks, while bystanders, including tourists with cameras and school-age children, continued to mill around the scene.

The museum is normally heavily guarded, with guards both inside and outside and metal detectors to screen visitors. A museum spokesman said the facility would be closed for the rest of the day.

At the White House, spokesman Robert Gibbs said the White House was 'obviously saddened by what had happened' and was receiving updates from the FBI on the investigation.