06/10/2009 -An 88-year-old white supremacist is in custody for shooting and killing a security guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, today. Guards returned fired, hitting the gunman, who is hospitalized in critical condition.

Via The Washington Post:

An elderly gunman known to authorities as a white supremacist fatally shot a private security guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in downtown Washington today before being wounded by guards who returned fire, officials said.

The security guard, who was identified by police as 39-year-old Stephen Tyrone Johns of Temple Hills, Md., and the gunman were both taken to George Washington University Hospital.

Johns died at the hospital, authorities said later, and the gunman was reported to be in critical condition. A third person sustained minor injuries in the incident, according to police.

Museum officials said in a statement that Johns had worked at the museum for six years. The museum said it would be closed tomorrow, and lower its flags to half-staff, to honor Johns's memory. "There are no words to express our grief," the statement said.

The suspect, James Von Brunn,according to another Post article, was an extreme white supremacist that maintained a "rambling, racist and bitterly anti-semitic website."

You can follow live coverage of the incident as it unfolds with the Post,here.

Photo byRob_Crawley/Flickr