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Stephen Tyrone Johns, a security guard at the National Holocaust Museum, lost his life when a white supremacist nutjob opened fire, leaving one dead and one injured.
Colleagues called Stephen T. Johns “Big John,” for he was well over 6 feet tall. But mostly friends recalled the security guard’s constant courtesy and friendliness.
“A soft-spoken, gentle giant,” said Milton Talley, a former employee of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, where Johns was killed yesterday in the line of duty — shot, authorities said, by an avowed white supremacist who entered the museum with a rifle.
Details of the shooting remained sketchy last night, but apparently the 39-year-old, who was armed with a .38-caliber revolver, did not have time to react when James W. von Brunn walked into the museum, according to police sources.
“Immediately upon entering the front doors of the museum, he raised the rifle and started shooting,” D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier said of von Brunn, 88, adding that he “was engaged by security guards, and there was an exchange of gunfire.”
When the smoke cleared, von Brunn was critically wounded. The only casualty among the guards was Johns, who lived in Prince George’s County. At least one bullet from a small-caliber rifle hit Johns in his upper-left torso, according to Johns’s employer, the Wackenhut security company.
“Two other . . . armed security officers opened fire with their service revolvers,” the company said. “The intruder was hit at once” and wounded.
Johns died at George Washington University Hospital.
“There are no words to express our grief and shock over these events,” the museum said in a statement, describing Johns as “an outstanding colleague who greeted us every day with a smile.”
Johns, a 1988 graduate of Crosslands High School in Temple Hills, lived in an apartment in the Temple Hills area. Friends said he had a son.
… William S. Parsons, the Holocaust museum’s chief of staff, praised Johns and his colleagues.
“Never take your guard force or your security people for granted,” Parsons said. “They did exactly what they were supposed to do.”
Keep him and his family in your prayers.
Now, as for the shooter… apparently, he has a history of violence.
The suspect in Wednesday’s shooting at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum is James von Brunn, an 88-year-old white supremacist from Maryland, two law enforcement officials told CNN.
Von Brunn served six years in prison on federal attempted kidnapping, assault and firearms charges after what he called a citizen’s “legal, nonviolent citizens arrest” of members of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.
On his Web site, “Holy Western Empire,” von Brunn said he was “convicted by a Negro jury, Jew/Negro attorneys, and sentenced to prison for eleven years by a Jew judge.”
“He is in our files going back way into the 1980s,” said Heidi Beirich, a researcher for the Montgomery, Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center.
“He has extremely long history with neo-Nazis and white supremacists. He’s written extremely incendiary publications, raging about Jews, blacks and the like.”
And of course, the liberals are rushing to tie this wackjob in with right wingers. Markos Moulitsas is trying to link him to the tea party movement. A recommended DailyKos post uses this shooting and the Dr. Tiller murder to chronicle the rise of “right-wing terrorism”. Salon’s editor-in-chief Joan Walsh is blaming the shooting on Bill O’Reilly, Michelle Malkin, and Rush Limbaugh for “whipping up” a hateful climate that inspires crazies to go on shooting rampages. The DUmmies are linking the shooter to Free Republic, naming Freepers who they think are the most likely to be, in their words, the “next anti-American terrorist”. They even advocated doing a pool, where everyone throws in a Freeper username and some money, and whoever guessed right “wins”. Another DUmmy thread smeared Michelle Malkin, and said that he was “just an average Republican, acting on what average Republicans think”. The Daily Beast called it “the return of right wing terror”.
The guy was a Truther and not even close to being conservative. He openly hated Bush and McCain, and also spewed venom towards “neo-conservatives”. And as Melissa pointed out, it’s our liberal president who wants to meet with Holocaust-denier Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, possibly the biggest and most hate-filled anti-Semite in the world. The difference between us (the right wing), though, and them is that I don’t think President Obama, or most liberals, have anything in common with this nutjob. I just want to point out the hypocrisy here.
Rather than condemning the entire right wing, or the entire tea party movement, why don’t they focus their energy on condemning the man who actually pulled the trigger? Why not condemn the man who actually murdered someone? Is it because liberals like to focus on the group and not on the individual? Well, that’s just too bad, because this was an individual action. And I’m happy to report that I’m positive that, when the shitbag dies, he’ll be burning in hell.
Hat Tip: Michelle Malkin
Rick says: It’s so odd that the DUmmies and other libs would automatically try to pin this atrocity on Republicans. There’s really nothing about this guy to connect him to the party of Lincoln in any way. Von Brun is a Truther, anti-Christian, anti-Israel (aka anti-Semite), and hates Bush–all Democrat traits. Furthermore he is a white supremacist and, as I recall, every founding member of the Ku Klux Klan was a Democrat. During its heyday, the Klan was even known as the “terrorist wing of the Democrat party.” Oh, and lets not forget that the Democrats are solely responsible for Jim Crow and segregation. They also opposed the Republicans every step of the way in implementing the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments. And what party did every single villain of the Civil Rights era (Bull Connor, George Wallace, Orville Faubus, etc.) belong to? Hmmm..Oh, that’s right, the Democrat party. Let’s face it hatred and racism are in the Democrats’ DNA. The Democrat party is the party of slavery and racism. The Republican party is the party of freedom and equal opportunity for all. Silly Democrat Kluckers.
Hulio says: Rick, you do know that all those self-same “Dixie”crats moved over to the Republican Party when FDR (ladybyrd) and Lyndon Johnson pushed civil rights to the legislation and attracted blacks to join en mass. Before the 60s, most Blacks were republicans (Lincoln) and were shunned from it with no voice thereafter.
I mean if you are going to be political about it at least complete the history.
mainermike says: What a tragedy.
Scott says: It is sad that the guard was killed, but how did he not see the rifle when he opened the door for the accused shooter? Did he become complacent in his duties?
BobV says: Kudos to the security guards. I doubt he would have stopped voluntarily at one murder.
jay dee says: this is amazing how about federal hate crime charges, he walks into a holocaust museum shoots it up and all they are going to charge him with is murder, give me a break, when a white person does something like this, they are considered crazy, if any minority would have done this they would lock them up and throw away the key, what this tells me is even if you a white supremisist your are still protected…its called white privilege….. this country has along way to go.
I R A Darth Aggie says: I’ve seen a rumor that the shooter was in fact – you ready for it? – a registered Democrat.
As a security company in Atlanta, http://www.mercerprotectionagency.com, my condolences go to the security guard who was murdered senselessly.
sonja says: I feel for the guard’s family. Von Brunn should be charged with murder as a hate crime.
Rick says: Hulio,
I have the history correct. “All those Dixiecrats” did not move over to the Republican party. That is a myth to make Democrats feel better about their racist, slave-owning past. They are still here in Alabama where I live, they still call themselves Democrats, and they run the state. And, as I recall, the only current member of Congress who was a Klucker is Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV). Byrd has been a Democrat his entire life. BTW, Blacks had switched parties by the end of the 30s, but it had nothing to do with FDR’s Civil Rights record, which was pretty much non-existent (he even opposed anti-lynching laws in the South). They switched parties primarily because they were overwhelmingly poor and FDR greatly expanded the welfare state. You Demokluckers need to own your own history, just like you expect Republicans to.
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