why 14th street was closed for so long

[acroyear]

Elderly gunman kills guard at Holocaust Museum - Yahoo! News:

One law enforcement official said James Von Brunn, 89, a white supremacist, was under investigation in the shooting, and a second official said the elderly man's car was found near the museum and tested for explosives.

This bit is the kicker. Some on other sites were asking why 14th Street was closed for so long, given that, "everything happened *inside* the museum, right?".

Simple answer: gunmen don't always *just* use guns. The terrorist attack at the Pakitstan hotel a couple days ago was done by *first* bombing the area in order to clear the first security hurdle, then following that up with the gun attack in order to take out the innocents.

(and in Columbine, the authorities found a number of undetonated explosives among the boy's stuff and throughout the school, at least according to some stories I've read - that may have been invalidated later as just rumor mill.)

This *could* have been intended the same: go inside and investigate the situation, come back out, set off bombs, then follow that up with the shooting.

Turns out it wasn't, but law enforcement HAS to consider that possibility, that there's more going on than just lone-gunman-single-gun, and that requires getting everybody else the hell away from the scene.

Comments

[stori-lundi.livejournal.com]

Securing the area has long been procudure even before people started routinely blowing up buildings. You never know if there is a follow-up shooter in the area or in the building trying to get out.

But dingbat me just realised why the traffic signs all said, "Major Delays Into DC on 395N".

[thatliardiego.livejournal.com]

I remember from my days at Brady, that yes, the Columbine kids had made a bomb from a propane gas tank that didn't go off.

[marauderosu.livejournal.com]

"Get it all on record now - get the films - get the witnesses - because somewhere down the track of history some bastard will get up and say that this never happened." - General Dwight D. Eisenhower, upon finding victims of Nazi death camps, 1945