Museum reopens to crowds after shooting

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum reopened Friday to thousands of visitors, many of whom expressed a solemn resolve not to let the tragedy of Wednesday’s fatal shooting deter them from visiting the landmark and living their normal lives.

While a line snaked outside the building’s entrance, there was little sign of Wednesday’s gunbattle that began when security guard Stephen T. Johns was fatally shot inside the museum lobby and ended when fellow guards returned fire and critically injured the purported shooter, James W. von Brunn.

The bullet-pocked glass doors were replaced, and the yellow crime-scene tape had disappeared. But a memorial of flowers remained outside the museum, just blocks from the National Mall - home to the Smithsonian museums, the Washington Monument and other popular tourist attractions in the nation’s capital.

“Today seemed reverent,” said Nichole Radke, 18, who drove 30 hours from Nebraska to visit the District with her 4-H group. “People just come in, and they’re very quiet and very respectful. They’re very appreciative of the officers outside.”

The names of the two security guards who returned fire on the gunman and stopped the attack surfaced Friday. One of the officers, Jason McCuiston, was a sergeant in the U.S. Marine Corps and a police officer in Georgia before he returned to his hometown of Waldorf, Md.

Mr. McCuiston, 30, said he and the other officer involved in the incident - Harry Weeks - carpool together and both had worked at the museum only a short time. Each had agreed to work on his day off on the day the shooting occurred, he said.

Mr. McCuiston described Mr. Johns as a “big teddy bear” and likened him to John Coffey, a character played by Michael Clarke Duncan in the 1999 film “The Green Mile.”

“I can’t express or say enough or give my condolences enough for that man,” Mr. McCuiston said. “We always played around and had a good time every morning before we would take our post for our shift.”

He said he could not discuss the shooting in detail. “I wish we could’ve done more,” he said. “I wish we could’ve prevented a lot more.”

Mr. Weeks is a former Metropolitan Police Department officer who spent nearly 30 years on the force and retired in February, said Kristopher Baumann, who heads the union labor committee that represents the department’s officers.

He called Mr. Weeks a “great public servant.”

“What the general public may not understand is the amount of danger Officer Weeks put himself in,” he said. “Officer Weeks stepped up, put himself in the line of fire and engaged in a gunfight with a handgun against a long gun, and the odds in that aren’t very good.”

By noon Friday, more than 3,100 people had entered the Holocaust museum, a museum spokesman said. The average number of visitors on a Friday at this time of year is about 7,500.

The Weech family, from Spokane, Wash., was among many tourists who purchased tickets to the museum for Wednesday, when the shooting occurred, or for Thursday, when the building was closed in honor of Mr. Johns. The family made a point of returning on Friday.

After a terrifying experience when he was separated from his parents inside the museum during the shooting, Jay Weech, 18, came back to the museum with his family to finish his tour.

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