Military Museum Founder Is Killed by Police in Connecticut A Connecticut man who was shot and killed by the local police at the start of the Memorial Day weekend was identified Sunday by state authorities as a 75-year-old Army veteran and founder of a military museum in Danbury. The authorities said the man, John Valluzzo, was armed with a handgun when officers from the Ridgefield Police Department confronted him in the front yard of his property on Friday just after 5:15 p.m. The officers had responded to a call of a domestic dispute at that address, 423 Ridgebury Road in Ridgefield, along a verdant stretch of sizable homes. "Ridgefield officers order the subject to disarm and put down his weapon," according to a statement by the Connecticut State Police, whose detectives are investigating the shooting. Mr. Valluzzo did not comply with the officers" instructions, the police said. "He raised the weapon toward the officers and caused a Ridgefield officer to discharge his service weapon, striking the male subject," the police said. Mr. Valluzzo died a short time later at Danbury Hospital. The circumstances of the shooting - and the domestic dispute that originally drew police to the Valluzzo home - remained unclear. The police did not name the officer who fired his weapon and was unhurt in the shooting, or describe how many shots had been fired. Mr. Valluzzo, a local business owner, served in the United States Army in the late 1950s. In 1995, he opened the Military Museum of Southern New England on Park Avenue in Danbury. It was listening to accounts of World War II veterans that spurred Mr. Valluzzo's desire to create a collection focused on veterans of that conflict, he said in an interview with The New York Times in 1999. "I realized that we owed our freedom, our standard of living, and in fact our very lives, to those who unselfishly answered the call of duty at such a pivotal time in history," he said. The museum grew from Mr. Valluzzo's original focus on World War II and now holds more than 10,000 artifacts covering the military history of the United States through the 20th century, according to the museum's Web site. Some of the original items gathered by Mr. Valluzzo, including an M-18 military vehicle that he procured in 1987 from the government of what was then Yugoslavia, took a bit of international diplomacy. "I felt like 007 in Yugoslavia; there were interpreters and guards everywhere, the doors and walls were padded, it was really serious, top-security," he recalled in 1999. The museum, which allows visitors to go inside some of its tanks and vehicles to "experience what it's like to pilot history," noted Mr. Valluzzo's death in a statement on its Web site, saying, "Sorrow fills our hearts at this sad moment." "The executive directors of the Military Museum of Southern New England believe it is befitting on this Memorial Day weekend to honor his memory by remaining open to the public during this difficult time," the statement said. But it declined to offer further comment "until we have all had a chance to comprehend fully the impact of this senseless tragedy." One former museum employee, Brian Ashley, 50, who lives in Danbury, rode his bike to the museum on Sunday evening to pay his respects after hearing of Mr. Valluzzo's death. He looked through the chain-link fence surrounding the museum at the Sheridan tank that he helped restore. "I don't believe this happened," he said, crying. He was such a nice guy. Elizabeth Maker contributed reporting.