HotmailGuard dies after Holocaust museum shooting
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 | More details about museum shooter June 11: An 88-year-old white supremacist fatally shoots a security guard inside the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. Police believe he may have been planning other attacks. NBC’s Pete Williams reports. Today show |
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 | Witness tells of D.C. museum shooting June 11: Angela Andelson, who watched a gunman walk into the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, talks to TODAY’s Matt Lauer about the incident. “I was very scared,” she says. Today show |
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 | Obama effect in D.C. shooting? June 10: Criminologist Jack Levin of Northeastern University suggests that social, cultural and economic changes taking place in the United States may be triggering recent violent outbursts from fringe extremists. MSNBC |
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 | Holocaust museum shooting A gunman with a violent and anti-Semitic past opened fire inside the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum on Wednesday, fatally wounding a security guard. more photos |
Heavy security
The museum normally has a heavy security presence with guards positioned both inside and outside. All visitors are required to pass through metal detectors at the entrance, and bags are screened.
Linda Elston, who was visiting the museum from Nevada City, Calif., said she was on the lower level of the museum watching a film when she and others were told to evacuate.
"It was totally full of people," Elston said. "It took us a while to get out."
She said she didn't hear any shots and didn't immediately know why there was an evacuation. The experience left her feeling "a little anxious," she said.
Reactions from others
In a statement from Israel's government, Information and Diaspora Minister Yuli Edelstein said the shooting was "further proof that anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial have not passed from the world."
And the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a prominent American Muslim organization, said in a statement, "We condemn this apparent bias-motivated attack and stand 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."
Within minutes after the attack, federal agents were dispatched to von Brunn's home in Annapolis, Md., to check his computer. Joseph Persichini, assistant director in charge of the Washington FBI field office, said the shootings were being investigated as a possible hate crime or a case of domestic terrorism.
According to a relative, von Brunn attended Washington University in St. Louis and is an artist.
He was commissioned as a naval officer decades ago, and discharged from the Navy in 1956. A cousin, Virginia Gerker of St. Louis, said in an interview she hadn't seen him in 50 years. She said her family had "disowned" him believed him to be mentally ill.
Tried to get his art shown in gallery
About a dozen years ago, he applied to have his art shown at a gallery in Easton, Md., according to two of the owners. Laura Era and Jennifer Wharton said they rejected his work and he stomped out.
Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center said von Brunn's Web site has long been listed as a hate site.
The Rev. David Ostendorf, executive director of Center for a New Community in Chicago, a national civil rights group, said von Brunn has described in his own writings a long relationship with Willis Carto, founder of the Liberty Lobby, the Spotlight Newspaper and a well-known white supremacist and anti-Semite.
Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center said von Brunn's Web site has long been listed as a hate site.
"We've been tracking this guy for decades," said Heidi Beirich, director of research for the law center's Intelligence Project, which tracks hate crimes. "He thinks the Jews control the Federal Reserve, the banking system, that basically all Jews are evil."
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