I blogged on this last night, and I made some comments that might have been interpreted by some, as if I did not care if someone died in this shooting. That post was written before I knew that someone had died in the shooting. As for what some might have taken away from what I have written; please, allow me to clear some things up, okay?
But first the story….
Via Washington Times:
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.
Stephen T. Johns
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.
Allen Burcky, another former museum employee, said last night that workers there considered each other “like family” and that Johns was “very courteous, very helpful.”
Lourdes Padilla, the mother of a close friend, said that Johns trained as a plumber but that she didn’t think he had ever entered the trade. He remarried about a year ago, Padilla said.
Johns’s sister, Jacqueline Carter, declined to comment as she entered her home in Temple Hills. “She’s in bad shape right now,” said a man who was driving her.
Wackenhut describes itself as the U.S. government’s “largest contractor for professional security services.” An official with the union that represents Wackenhut employees at the museum said Johns was paid about $20 an hour.
“It’s a heavy loss,” said Assane Faye, the Washington district director of the Security, Police and Fire Professionals of America.
Okay now to make myself absolutely clear. I feel the shooting of this fine officer to be a horrific tragedy. Further more, let me please state something, that should be very obvious to everyone; no matter what one’s personal political or personal convictions are about anything or anyone, there is NO and I repeat there is ABSOLUTELY NO JUSTIFICATION for committing acts of violence or murder. That goes for anything, whether it be this murder here or the murder of the abortion doctor; this was a act of cowardice, as was the murder of the abortion doctor.
Further more, let me say this to my follow bloggers on both sides of the political aisle. No amount of political sniping, dogmatic positioning or any other sort of idiotic nonsense is going to bring this poor man back from the dead. The short and blunt truth is, that there is a man dead tonight who was simply trying to do his job. Further more, let me state that anyone, of any political persuasion or personal conviction status, who would attempt to say that this homicide was justified; is no better than the person that pulled the trigger in this tragic event. There is, I do not care what the reasoning was; no justification for murder at all.
Again, because of the sensitive nature of this story, I am closing comments; because I just do not want to risk some troll coming in here and causing me any problems.
Others covering this story: MyFox DC, Cassy Fiano, Michelle Malkin, Don Surber, Washington Monthly and The Sundries Shack
Update: Corrected spelling in title… I am such a goof… and for this; I apologize.