Elias Rodriguez, 30, has been charged with the murder of two young Israeli embassy staffers who were gunned down outside of the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday night.
Police charged Chicago, Ill. native Rodriguez with murder of foreign officials and first-degree murder, among other things. Rodriguez chanted “Free, free Palestine” as he was being detained and told police in custody that “I did it for Palestine, I did it for Gaza.”
The staffers, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim, attended an American Jewish Committee Young Diplomats reception at the museum Wednesday evening to discuss the humanitarian crisis in Israel and Gaza.
Metropolitan Police Department Chief Pamela Smith said that event attendees saw Rodriguez pacing outside of the museum before he took a handgun and opened fire on a group of four people.
Rodriguez fired at the victims several times, and continued shooting even after the victims had fallen to the ground, according to an FBI affidavit in the criminal complaint. He shot Milgrim again as she tried to crawl away from the brutal attack.
The suspect discarded the gun and went inside, where he was detained by security.
Onlookers captured a video of Rodriguez yelling “free Palestine” as he was taken into custody.
The two victims were dating and had planned to get engaged soon, Israel’s ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter said.
“The couple that was gunned down tonight in the name of Free Palestine was a young couple about to be engaged,” Leiter said. “The young man purchased a ring this week with the intention of proposing to his girlfriend next week in Jerusalem. They were a beautiful couple who came to enjoy an evening in Washington’s cultural center.”
Lischinsky worked in the political department of the Israeli embassy. Born in Israel, Lischinsky moved with his family to Germany as a child and returned to Israel several years later. He was a Christian, served in the Israel Defense Forces, and “embodied the Judeo-Christian values and set an example for young people worldwide,” Ambassador of Israel to Germany Ron Prosor said.
“This didn’t happen in a warzone,” Prosor said. “It happened in the capital of the free world, in the heart of Washington, D.C. Chanting ‘Free Palestine’ is not just a slogan, it’s a call to action to target Jews wherever they are.”
Milgrim grew up in the Kansas City suburb of Prairie Village, Kansas and worked in the Israeli embassy’s public diplomacy office. She had a master’s degree from D.C.’s American University, and a master’s from the United Nations University of Peace. On her LinkedIn profile, Milgrim said that her passion was “at the intersection of peace building, religious engagement, and environmental work.”
“While working with Tech2Peace in Tel Aviv, Israel, I conducted comprehensive research on peace building theory, emphasizing grassroots initiatives in the Israeli-Palestinian region,” Milgrim’s LinkedIn page read. “My diverse experiences, including facilitating insightful discussions on geopolitics in Israel and Palestine as a Jewish Educator, and researching an array of environmental topics in India and Central America, reflecting my commitment to fostering understanding between different peoples.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi, who was on-scene at the Capital Jewish Museum after the attack, said that U.S. Attorney for the District of Washington Jeanine Pirro would prosecute the suspect to the fullest extent of the law. President Donald Trump condemned the “horrible DC killings, based obviously on antisemitism.”
“Hatred and Radicalism have no place in the USA,” Trump said on social media. “Condolences to the families of the victims. So sad that such things as this can happen!”
The suspected murderer’s LinkedIn page shows that he works as a priorities administrative specialist at the American Osteopathic Association and used to serve as a researcher at the HistoryMakers, a nonprofit “committed to preserving and making widely accessible the untold personal stories of both well-known and unsung African Americans,” according to its statement of purpose.
Rodriguez’s biography on the HistoryMakers website, which has since been deleted, said that the suspect was “born and raised in Chicago, Illinois,” and holds “a B.A. degree in English from the University of Illinois at Chicago.”
Rodriguez also had a “brief association” with the Party for Socialism and Liberation, according to the party, but “is not a member of the PSL.” Reports that Rodriguez belongs to the party arose after a speech he gave in October 2017 supposedly on behalf of the PSL circulated.
“The wealth that Amazon has brought to Seattle has not been shared with its black residents,” Rodriguez said in the speech, according to a post from the party’s news site Liberation, which was deleted shortly after Wednesday’s attack. “[Amazon’s] whitening of Seattle is structurally racist and a direct danger to all workers who live in that city.”