Holocaust museum shooter charged with murder

Washington - A white supremacist who opened fire in the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington and killed a security guard has been charged with murder, city officials said Thursday. The Federal Bureau of Investigation said it was also looking into possible hate crimes or civil rights charges. James W von Brunn, carrying a long rifle, entered the museum just blocks from the National Mall and Washington Monument shortly before 1 pm Wednesday and immediately fired at armed security guards. Security guard Stephen Tyrone Johns, who had worked at the museum for six years, was shot and died of his injuries later at a local hospital. The museum remained closed Thursday in his honour. Von Brunn remains in critical condition in a hospital and will be charged with murder and possessing a weapon on federal government property, Washington Police Chief Cathy Lanier told reporters on Thursday. 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 with the US military in World War II, worked for a New York advertising agency and belong to Mensa, the high-IQ society. The FBI was investigating his ties to hate groups, but stressed that he appeared to have acted alone. The FBI did not have an open investigation on von Brunn, but said he was known to the bureau for his hateful speech, the agency's Joseph Persechini said.