On Wednesday June 10 2009, 88-year old avowed white supremacist James von Brunn opened fire at the security guards at the entrance of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. He fatally shot 39-year-old security guard Stephen Johns, before being shot by the other guards. Brunn is reported to be in critical but stable condition and will face charges for the shooting. Brunn is known for his violent and virulently anti-Semitic past.

The museum was closed Thursday in honor of  Stephen T. Johns.

Son condemns father's violence

Erik von Brunn, 32, expressed his condolences for the guard's death and condemned his father's actions.

"I cannot express enough how deeply sorry I am it was Mr. Johns, and not my father who lost their life yesterday [Wednesday]," Erik von Brunn, 32, says in a written statement to ABC News. "It was unjustified and unfair that he died, and while my condolences could never begin to offer appeasement, they, along with my remorse is all I have to give."

In his statement to ABC and a phone interview with The Washington Post yesterday, von Brunn said his father's bigotry was a shadow over his life. He said in the interview that he was too young to know his father when James von Brunn went to prison for 6 1/2 years for attempting to kidnap members of the Federal Reserve Board at its District headquarters in December 1981. Erik von Brunn, now 32, was nearly 11 when his father was released.

"Even from that moment, he still had those beliefs," said von Brunn, reached by phone at his mother's home in Homosassa, Fla., about an hour north of Tampa. "It was always a part of our life." Erik von Brunn is an aspiring teacher and science fiction writer who recently graduated from the University of Maryland.

In the statement, von Brunn directly addresses white supremacists. "For the extremists who believe my father is a hero: it is imperative you understand what he did was an act of cowardice," he writes. "His actions have undermined your 'movement,' and strengthened the resistance against your cause. He should not be remembered as a brave man or a hero, but a coward unable to come to grips with the fact he threw his and his families lives away for an ideology that fostered sadness and anguish."

Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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Makes me think, please stop the hate! This is just stupid to hate people for their race, this has to stop!