Washington - An elderly white supremacist and anti-Semite
who opened fire in the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington and
killed a black security guard has been charged with murder and could
face hate crime and civil rights charges, officials said Thursday.
A Federal Bureau of Investigation agent indicated the shooting
had triggered a nationwide investigation to make sure the suspect had
acted alone 'on these very hallowed grounds of the Holocaust museum.'
'It is very important that we send a message that this country
does not authorize or approve any act that is attached to hatred in
America,' said FBI agent Joseph Persechini.
James W von Brunn, 88 carrying a long rifle, entered the museum by
a lesser-used back entrance, just blocks from the National Mall and
Washington Monument, shortly before 1 pm Wednesday and immediately
fired at an armed security guard who had opened the door for him.
The guard, Stephen Tyrone Johns, 39, an African-American who had
worked at the museum for six years, died of his injuries later at a
local hospital. The museum remained closed Thursday in his honour.
Two other guards immediately opened fire on von Brunn in the
museum lobby, leaving him in critical condition and in hospital. He
is being charged with murder and possessing a weapon on federal
government property, Washington Police Chief Cathy Lanier told
reporters on Thursday.
Museum chief of staff Bill Parsons said Johns and other security
guards are trained not only to protect but also to 'be caring.'
'Stephen opened that door for the elderly man coming in,' Parsons
said. 'He was caring about him, and he opened the door, and he was
shot.'
'There's no shortage of hate in the world. When it happens to your
workplace, your colleagues, it gets very painful,' he said.
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 he was known to the bureau for
his hateful speech, Persechini said.
Pereschini noted the fine line that investigators walk between hate
crime charges and protection of constitutional rights of expression.
He said that 'many of these individuals are totally aware of what you
can or cannot say ... in crossing the line that would trigger a
terrorist investigation.'
The shooting at the museum activated a city-wide scramble to make
sure it was not part of a broader terrorism attack on the capital,
Lanier said.
Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty noted the special nature of the
violence at the Holocaust Museum, an institution that exists 'because
they are trying to recognize wrongs done in the past ... and make
sure they're not repeated.'
Pereschini said that a search of von Brunn's car parked outside
the museum entrance turned up documents that contained names and
addresses. FBI agents had contacted the people named in the documents
to make sure there was no 'potential threat' against them.
The museum, funded by both private and government money, has had
nearly 30 million visitors since its dedication in 1993 and works to
increase awareness not only of the World War II Holocaust but of
contemporary humanitarian issues such as the genocide in Darfur.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil
liberties and advocacy group, Wednesday condemned 'this apparent
bias-motivated attack' and said in a statement that it stands with
the 'Jewish community and with Americans of all faiths in repudiating
the kind of hatred and intolerance that can lead to such disturbing
incidents.'
USA
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