Accused gunman in U.S. Holocaust museum shooting dies

James W. Von Brunn is seen in this Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration file handout photograph.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An elderly man who was accused in a 2009 shooting rampage that killed a security guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., died on Wednesday, a prison spokeswoman said.

James Von Brunn, 89, was wounded in the June 10, 2009, attack when guards returned fire and he had a history of poor health including chronic congestive heart failure and sepsis. However, the cause of death was not immediately available.

He was being held at the medical wing of the Butner Federal Correctional Complex in North Carolina. He died at a local hospital where he had been transferred, said Felicia Ponce, a spokeswoman for the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

Von Brunn was charged with murder of the security guard, Stephen Tyrone Johns, as well as related hate crime and gun charges for the alleged attack. Police recovered anti-Jewish writings in his car after the shooting.

The museum, a memorial to the 6 million Jews killed by Nazis during the Holocaust, is near the National Mall where many of Washington's museums and monuments are located.

(Reporting by Jeremy Pelofsky, editing by Eric Beech)