By AP
WASHINGTON – The director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum says their security training helped save lives when guards quickly shot an elderly gunman who opened fire with a rifle.
Sara Bloomfield also paid tribute to a guard who was killed in the Wednesday attack. She told NBC's "Today" show Thursday that 39-year-old officer Stephen Tyrone Johns was both a terrific professional and a warm, jovial person.
Authorities say the gunman who was critically injured was 88-year-old James W. von Brunn. They say he was a white supremacist with a virulent anti-Semitic past.
Bloomfield told the "Today" show that the Holocaust museum takes security very seriously and training for its guards had paid off because two guards stopped the attacker and no visitors were hurt.