Live Updates: Investigators Focus on Background of Suspect in Killing of Israeli Embassy Staff
The suspect shouted “Free Palestine” while being arrested Wednesday night after the shooting in Washington, officials said. Agents in Chicago have entered his apartment building.
transcript
Shooting of Israeli Embassy Employees Shakes Washington
The shooting occurred on a street outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington.
I was walking by and a guy came up and [it] looked like a gun, I couldn’t tell what it was, but I heard it afterwards, the shots. And he shot this young couple. He just ran up. It was... It was terrible. Prior to the shooting, the suspect was observed pacing back and forth outside of the museum. He approached a group of four people, produced a handgun, and opened fire, striking both of our decedents. After the shooting, the suspect then entered the museum and was detained by event security. Free, free Palestine. Free, free Palestine. The couple that was gunned down tonight in the name of “free Palestine,” is a young couple about to be engaged. The young man purchased a ring this week with the intention of proposing to his girlfriend next week in Jerusalem. I have been worried for the past few months that something like this would happen. There is a direct line connecting antisemitic and anti-Israeli incitement to this murder. This incitement is also done by leaders and officials of many countries and international organizations, especially from Europe.
Several F.B.I. agents in tactical gear entered a Chicago apartment building on Thursday morning where a man suspected of fatally shooting two Israeli Embassy staff members is believed to live.
The close-range shooting occurred shortly after 9 p.m. Eastern time Wednesday in Washington on a street outside the Capital Jewish Museum, where the American Jewish Committee was hosting a reception for young diplomats. The area is the heart of official Washington, packed with federal buildings, embassies and museums.
Yaron Lischinsky, 30, who grew up in Israel and Germany, and Sarah Milgrim, 26, who was from Kansas, were killed in the attack.
The suspect, identified as Elias Rodriguez, 30, of Chicago, was detained shortly after the shooting. Pamela A. Smith, the chief of the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, told reporters at a news conference late Wednesday that Mr. Rodriguez exclaimed, “Free, free Palestine,” after he was in custody. His social media accounts indicated that he had been involved in pro-Palestinian activism.
Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, referred to the killings as an act of terror. “Targeted anti-Semitic violence is an attack on our core values and will be met with the full weight of federal law enforcement,” he said on social media.
Here’s what we’re covering:
The victims: Mr. Lischinsky, was a research assistant in the political department at the embassy. Ms. Milgrim, an American from Prairie Village, Kan., organized trips to Israel, according to the ministry. Officials and family members said Mr. Lischinsky had planned to propose next week on a trip to Israel. Read more about the couple.
The suspect: Officials said a lone gunman approached four people who were leaving the event, shot the two victims and then entered the museum, where he was detained by security officers. The suspect’s online profiles indicated that he was raised in Chicago, graduated from a university in the city and worked at a health care nonprofit. Read more about him.
The scene in Chicago: Several federal agents arrived early Thursday morning outside a multiunit building on Chicago’s Northwest Side where the accused gunman was believed to have lived. Windows in what appeared to be the suspect’s unit were adorned with two signs about Palestinians, including one that referenced the 2023 killing of a Palestinian American boy in Illinois.
Israel reacts: Israeli officials described the shooting as a product of antisemitism that has been rising since the Israeli military went to war against Hamas in Gaza following the militant group’s deadly attack on Oct. 7, 2023. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel spoke with President Trump and thanked the president for his administration’s efforts to combat antisemitism, Mr. Netanyahu’s office said in a statement.
Climate of protest: A wave of pro-Palestinian protests, most of which have been nonviolent, has erupted across the United States during the conflict in Gaza. Some critics, including the Trump administration and Israel, have accused the protesters of promoting antisemitism and inciting violence against Jews. Many demonstrators and their supporters have said that such accusations are intended to suppress political speech and their support for the Palestinian cause.
Aaron Boxerman, Robert Chiarito, Celeste Lavin, Claire Moses and John Yoon contributed reporting.
Dan Bongino, the deputy director of the F.B.I., said on social media that the bureau was examining a pro-Palestinian manifesto circulating online that may be connected to the suspect in the shooting.
Reporting from Tel Aviv
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel spoke with President Trump, who expressed his “deep sorrow” over the fatal shooting, Netanyahu’s office said in a statement. It said Netanyahu thanked Trump for his administration’s efforts to combat antisemitism in the United States.
Members of Misaskim, a Jewish group that supports grieving families, arrived in Washington from Baltimore and Silver Spring, Md., to collect any remains or blood from the sidewalk where Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim were shot. Jewish custom requires that the dead be buried with as much of the body as possible, said Meyer Weill, the president and co-founder of the group, which is based in Brooklyn.
Outside of the Capital Jewish Museum, at the corner of 3rd and F Streets, a visitor placed a pair of tea lights on a square paper plate covered by plastic cups with the names “Sarah” and “Yaron” printed on them. A heavy police presence remained on the scene in the early afternoon, including officers who blocked off the street closest to the front museum entrance.
Mayor Eric Adams of New York said he was reinforcing police protection at Jewish institutions and Israeli diplomatic facilities. He said the city knew of no connection between New York and what happened in Washington, but was rather acting out of an “overabundance of caution.”
Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, referred to the killings as an act of terror. “Targeted anti-Semitic violence is an attack on our core values and will be met with the full weight of federal law enforcement,” he said on social media.
Sarah Milgrim’s temple in Overland Park, Kan., is less than two miles from the site of a deadly antisemitic attack in 2014. Three people, none of them Jewish, were killed by a white supremacist in that shooting outside a Jewish community center and retirement home.
Sarah Milgrim, one of the two Israeli Embassy staff members killed by a gunman on Wednesday night, earned a master’s degree in international affairs from American University in 2023 and had interned in Israel, school officials said. “Sarah was only beginning her life’s journey, and it is anguishing that her light was taken away because of hate,” wrote Jonathan R. Alger, the university’s president.
The Capital Jewish Museum’s executive director and board members said in a statement that they were “heartbroken by the murders” and offered their condolences to the victims’ families. The museum was built, they said, to tell the story of “the greater Washington region’s vibrant Jewish community.” It will reopen in the coming days, they said, “with all necessary security in place.”
Sarah Milgrim’s congregation in her home state of Kansas remembered her as “a devoted Zionist and a radiant presence in every space she entered.” The temple’s statement added that “she stood for something larger than herself and she paid the ultimate price for it.”
The man accused of killing two Israeli Embassy aides in Washington posted a manifesto on the social media site X on Wednesday evening, condemning the war in Gaza and both the Israeli and American governments.
“In the wake of an act people look for a text to fix its meaning, so here’s an attempt,” he wrote under the title “Escalate For Gaza, Bring The War Home.” “The atrocities committed by the Israelis against Palestine defy description and defy quantification.”
He did not refer directly to the shooting on Wednesday evening, but added: “An armed action is not necessarily a military action. It usually is not.”
The suspect, Elias Rodriguez, is a Chicago resident who has participated in pro-Palestinian activism and was working at the American Osteopathic Information Association, a trade group for osteopathic doctors, the organization said. According to his LinkedIn profile, he was an administrative specialist and had worked there since last July. Before that position, his LinkedIn profile says, Mr. Rodriguez was an oral history researcher and production coordinator at a Black history site.
An online job biography said that he was born and raised in Chicago and graduated from the University of Illinois Chicago with a degree in English.
He posted video from a pro-Palestinian march in Chicago on X in 2023. He also was photographed participating in a protest at the home of Rahm Emanuel, then the mayor of Chicago, organized by the social justice group Answer Chicago, in opposition to Amazon opening a “second headquarters” in Chicago.
A Goodreads account linked to his email address reviewed books on politics, slavery, Maoism and Chicago history.
Mr. Rodriguez’s parents, reached by telephone, declined to comment on Thursday morning.
Mr. Rodriguez lived in Albany Park, one of the most diverse neighborhoods in Chicago, on the city’s northwest side. It is known as a community that has long welcomed immigrants. A century ago, it was home to many Jewish families from Europe, but it is now a draw for Latino, white and Asian residents of Chicago.
Windows in what appeared to be the suspect’s apartment were adorned with two signs about Palestinians, including one that referenced the 2023 killing of a Palestinian American boy in Illinois.
Aric Toler contributed research.
Agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrived on Thursday morning at the Chicago apartment that records indicated was the home of Elias Rodriguez, the man whom the authorities suspect of shooting and killing two Israeli Embassy workers in Washington on Wednesday night.
About a dozen law enforcement vehicles were parked on the street outside, and federal agents sat in unmarked vehicles. Agents also blocked the sidewalk in front of the brick apartment building, which has several units around a courtyard, and some were seen going in and out of the apartment, including two F.B.I. agents in full tactical gear. F.B.I. bomb technicians were also present.
In the window of the unit that appeared to be Mr. Rodriguez’s were two signs related to Palestine, including one that read “Justice for Wadea,” a reference to the 6-year-old Palestinian American boy killed in Chicago two years ago. Another sign read “Tikkun Olam means free Palestine.” (Tikkun Olam is a Hebrew phrase that means “repairing the world.”)
The apartment is in Albany Park on Chicago’s Northwest Side, one of the most ethnically diverse neighborhoods in the city and long known as a draw for immigrants. A century ago, it was home to Jewish families from Europe. Today, it is a mix of mostly Latino, white and Asian residents.
The fatal shooting happened just after 9 p.m. on Wednesday on a street outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, where the American Jewish Committee was hosting a reception for young diplomats. The police said Mr. Rodriguez had been pacing in front of the museum before the shooting.
After the police took him into custody, Mr. Rodriguez chanted, “Free, free Palestine,” according to Pamela Smith, the chief of the Metropolitan Police Department.
The victims both worked for the Israeli Embassy. The Israeli government identified them as Yaron Lischinsky, 30, and Sarah Lynn Milgrim, 26.
Julie Bosman contributed reporting.
The shooting took place outside an event organized by AJC Access, the young professionals division of the American Jewish Committee, that had speakers from the Multifaith Alliance and IsraAID, a humanitarian aid group. In a statement expressing shock at the killings, IsraAID said the event had “focused on bringing humanitarian aid to Gaza through Israeli-Palestinian and regional collaboration.”
Reporting from Chicago
Two F.B.I. agents in full tactical gear walked out of the suspect’s apartment building in Chicago, placed their armored shield in the back of a vehicle and walked back in. About a dozen law enforcement vehicles are parked outside, and F.B.I. bomb technicians are also on the scene.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel told the parents of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, the Israeli Embassy employees who were killed by a gunman Wednesday night, that he shared their deep grief, his office said in a statement. He also spoke with Attorney General Pam Bondi, who promised him that the perpetrator would be “brought to justice.”
The neighborhood where the suspect lives, Albany Park, on Chicago’s northwest side, is one of the most diverse neighborhoods in the city, long known as a draw for immigrants. A century ago, it was mostly a home for Jewish families from Europe, but now has a mix of Latino, white and Asian residents.
Reporting from Chicago
I’m outside the apartment building of the suspect in Chicago, where the street is blocked by police vehicles and F.B.I. agents appear to be waiting to conduct a search. In the window of the unit that appears to belong to the suspect are two signs related to Palestine, including one that says “Justice for Wadea” — a reference to the 6-year-old Palestinian American boy killed in Illinois two years ago.
Sarah Milgrim’s parents didn’t know that Yaron Lischinsky was planning to propose to her until after the couple was killed by a gunman in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday night.
Her parents had assumed that marriage was in the picture. Ms. Milgrim, who grew up in Prairie Village, Kan., had met Mr. Lischinsky shortly after joining the Israeli Embassy a year and a half ago to organize missions and visits by delegations. Mr. Lischinsky, a researcher at the embassy, had met her parents several times.
“He was incredible,” Ms. Milgrim’s father, Robert Milgrim, said in an interview. “He was very much like Sarah: passionate, extremely intelligent, dedicated to what he does, always on the cause of what’s right.”
A few months ago, Ms. Milgrim, 26, told her parents that she planned to travel with Mr. Lischinsky, 30, to meet his family in Jerusalem for the first time. What they didn’t know, and would only learn after the shooting, is that he had bought an engagement ring before the trip.
With the couple set to fly to Israel on Sunday, Ms. Milgrim’s mother, Nancy Milgrim, planned to travel on Friday to Washington from Prairie Village, a Kansas City suburb, to take care of her daughter’s dog, a goldendoodle named Andy.
On Wednesday night, Mr. Milgrim was getting ready for bed when news alerts on his cellphone appeared, describing a deadly shooting in Washington outside an event for the American Jewish Committee, where his daughter was a fellow. He immediately called the F.B.I. and the local police station, but neither could provide any information.
Nancy Milgrim opened a locator app on her cellphone and looked for her daughter’s location. It showed her at the Capital Jewish Museum, where the shooting had taken place.
“I pretty much already knew,” Mr. Milgrim said. “I was hoping to be wrong.”
Then Nancy Milgrim’s phone rang. It was Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Yechiel Leiter. He said Ms. Milgrim and her boyfriend had died, and gave his condolences.
It was a horrific moment, Mr. Milgrim said. He pointed to rising antisemitism since Israel went to war in Gaza following the Hamas-led attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
“What went through my mind is, I feel the antisemitism that has surfaced since Oct. 7 and also since the election of President Trump,” Mr. Milgrim said. “It’s just an extension of my worst fears.”
It was the ambassador who told them that Mr. Lischinsky had bought an engagement ring this week and intended to propose in Jerusalem.
“The ironic part is that we were worried for our daughter’s safety in Israel,” Mr. Milgrim added. “But she was murdered three days before going.”
Sarah Milgrim and Mr. Lischinsky both held master’s degrees and were passionate about their work at the embassy, according to others who knew them.
Mr. Lischinsky was born in Israel and moved with his family to Germany, where they lived for several years before returning to Israel when he was 16, said his brother Hanan, 32. His family lives in Beit Zayit, a small village in the hills west of Jerusalem.
Mr. Lischinsky had known from a young age that he wanted to be a diplomat for Israel, said Professor Nissim Otmazgin, one of his teachers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
“He saw that as his calling,” said Professor Otmazgin, the dean of the university’s faculty of humanities. Mr. Lischinsky studied there from 2018 to 2021, earning a bachelor’s degree in international relations and Asian studies.
Mr. Lischinsky specialized in Japanese studies and was an outstanding student, according to Professor Otmazgin. “He was an idealist,” he said. “He wanted to build bridges between Israel and other countries, especially in Asia.”
He grew up in a culturally mixed family with a Jewish father and a Christian mother, and was a practicing Christian, according to Ronen Shoval, the dean of the Argaman Institute for Advanced Studies in Jerusalem, where Mr. Lischinsky participated in a yearlong program in classical liberal conservative thought after earning a master’s degree in government and diplomacy.
“He was a devout Christian,” Dr. Shoval said, “but he had tied his fate to the people of Israel.”
In his application to join the program, which Dr. Shoval shared with The New York Times, Mr. Lischinsky described his upbringing in a multicultural family and “the inner struggles” he faced while growing up in a religious household within secular societies in Germany and Israel.
Hanan Lischinsky said his brother had been considering applying to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ cadet course to train to be a diplomat. People who worked with Mr. Lischinsky in the embassy said that there, he identified as Jewish.
Michael Herzog, who served as Israel’s ambassador to Washington from late 2021 until January, described Mr. Lischinsky and Ms. Milgrim as a “vibrant, bright and talented” couple who were “brimming with energy and always smiling.”
Ms. Milgrim got her bachelor’s degree from the University of Kansas in 2021. She had lived abroad in several places, including in Costa Rica, where she earned her master’s degree in natural resources and sustainable development from the University of Peace, established by the United Nations. She also earned a master’s in international affairs from American University.
Like many young Jewish Americans, she and her 28-year-old brother, Jacob, also participated in Birthright Israel, which offers free trips to Israel in an effort to bolster Jewish identity. In Israel, she worked for an organization that connected young Israelis and Palestinians, her father said.
Attacks shook the Jewish community in suburban Kansas City when she was growing up. In 2014, a gunman opened fire outside a Jewish community center and a nearby retirement community in Overland Park, Kan., killing three people.
In 2017, swastikas were graffitied on Ms. Milgrim’s public high school in Prairie Village. A senior at the time, Ms. Milgrim told the local television station KSHB-TV: “I worry about going to my synagogue, and now I have to worry about safety at my school. And that shouldn’t be a thing.”
Mr. Milgrim said that his daughter and Mr. Lischinsky were both concerned about peace in the Middle East, the stability of Israel and the plight of Palestinians.
“She was doing what she loved, she was doing good,” her father said. Doing good, he added, is “what brought her life to an end.”
Myra Noveck contributed reporting from Jerusalem. Isabelle Taft contributed reporting from New York.
Reporting from Jerusalem
Israelis reacted with shock and horror on Thursday to the killing of two staff members at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called an “appalling antisemitic murder.”
The shooting took place as the two aides were leaving an event organized by the American Jewish Committee at the Capital Jewish Museum on Wednesday. The police said that they had arrested a suspect in connection with the killings who had shouted,“free, free Palestine,” after he was taken into custody.
The attack seemed likely to feed into growing worries among Israelis that the world had become far more hostile to them while living and traveling abroad since the war in Gaza began more than a year and a half ago.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry has identified the victims as Sarah Lynn Milgrim, who was responsible for organizing missions and visits to Israel, and Yaron Lischinsky, a researcher in the political department. Yechiel Leiter, the Israeli ambassador to the United States, said that they were a couple about to be engaged.
David Schiff, who befriended Mr. Lischinsky at university, described him as “an incredibly talented guy — but more importantly, someone who was very kind.”
“He wanted to work in diplomacy. He was so excited to work at the embassy in D.C., and he loved D.C.,” Mr. Schiff, 31, said. “It’s all just shocking.”
Gideon Saar, the Israeli foreign minister, called the attack a consequence of “toxic antisemitic incitement against Israel and Jews around the world” since the Israel-Hamas war began in October 2023.
He blamed critics of the Israeli government in international organizations and government officials, “especially from Europe,” who have leveled accusations of genocide and crimes against humanity over the war in Gaza. Israel has strongly denied the accusations.
The attack set off a spate of finger-pointing among Israeli politicians, several of whom were quick to accuse their opponents of being indirectly responsible for the anti-Israel climate that they said precipitated the shooting. Some argued that Mr. Netanyahu’s policies were stoking anti-Israel sentiment abroad, while others blamed left-wing critics.
Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, that killed some 1,200 people and led to about 250 others being taken to Gaza as hostages. More than 53,000 people have been killed in the enclave as Israel has sought to destroy Hamas and free the hostages, according to local health officials, who do not distinguish between civilian and combatant deaths.
Israel initially enjoyed widespread support for its campaign against Hamas and ground invasion of the Gaza Strip. But as the war has dragged on, the skyrocketing death toll in Gaza has prompted waves of pro-Palestinian solidarity campaigns in Europe and the United States, as well as growing consternation and even anger among Israel’s allies.
Many Israelis have become warier about traveling overseas, fearing that their nationality could put them in danger. Israeli officials have at times warned members of the public to avoid showing Israeli and Jewish symbols, lest they become potential targets.
“It’s something that’s been in the background of my mind since Oct. 7 — that my security as a Jew, as an Israeli, has been impacted,” Mr. Schiff said.
Yair Golan, who leads the left-wing Democrats party, blamed Mr. Netanyahu’s right-wing government, which has vowed to take control of all of Gaza, of “fueling antisemitism and hatred of Israel.”
“The result is unprecedented political isolation and danger to every Jew in every corner of the globe,” Mr. Golan said in a statement.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, the far-right national security minister, suggested that leftist politicians who oppose the war — like Mr. Golan — had encouraged the attack on Wednesday by making statements critical of Israeli policies. He referenced a remark Mr. Golan made this week, in which Mr. Golan said that Israeli forces were “killing babies as a hobby” in Gaza.
“The blood of the victims is on their hands,” Mr. Ben-Gvir wrote on social media.
Israel’s diplomatic missions abroad have long been targets for attacks by groups opposed to the existence of the Jewish state. In 1982, Palestinian gunmen shot Israel’s ambassador to Britain.
In 1992, a bombing at the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina killed 29 people, most of them Argentine civilians. An Argentine court ruled last year that the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah had carried out that attack.
Last month, the British police charged a man with terrorism over an attempt to break into the Israeli Embassy in London while carrying two knives. There were no casualties. According to British law enforcement officials, the suspect had sought to “send a message to the Israeli government to stop the war” in Gaza.
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