Live Updates: Suspect Charged With Murder in Killings of 2 Embassy Aides
Federal prosecutors are investigating the shooting outside a Jewish museum in Washington as a hate crime and an act of terrorism. The suspect told police officers, “I did it for Gaza,” the F.B.I. said.
The suspect in the shooting deaths of two Israeli Embassy employees in Washington was charged with first-degree murder and other crimes on Thursday, according to an F.B.I. affidavit filed in federal court hours after federal agents in tactical gear descended on his Chicago home.
The suspect, Elias Rodriguez, 31, told police officers, “I did it for Palestine, I did it for Gaza,” when he was taken into custody Wednesday night after the shooting, according to the affidavit, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington. Jeanine Pirro, the interim U.S. attorney in Washington, said her office was investigating the shooting as a hate crime and as a crime of terrorism.
“We will add additional charges as the evidence warrants,” she said at a news conference, adding that the authorities were reviewing “massive amounts of evidence” and had not decided whether to pursue the death penalty.
Mr. Rodriguez, wearing a white jumpsuit, entered no plea at his initial appearance in federal court on Thursday afternoon.
The close-range shooting of the embassy workers occurred shortly after 9 p.m. Eastern time Wednesday 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.
The two people killed in the attack were a couple: Yaron Lischinsky, 30, who grew up in Israel and Germany, and Sarah Milgrim, 26, who was from Kansas. As Ms. Milgrim tried to crawl away from the gunman, he followed her and fired several more times, the F.B.I. affidavit says.
The weapon found at the crime scene was a 9-millimeter pistol that did not appear to have been purchased recently, the F.B.I. affidavit says. Mr. Rodriguez transported a gun in checked baggage on a flight from Chicago to Reagan National Airport on Tuesday, according to the affidavit.
A post on social media on Wednesday night from an account that The New York Times verified as belonging to Mr. Rodriguez condemned the Israeli and American governments, as well as Israeli military actions against Palestinians.
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. The two were dating, and officials and family members said Mr. Lischinsky had planned to propose marriage 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.
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, Julie Bosman, Robert Chiarito, Erica L. Green, Celeste Lavin, Claire Moses, Qasim Nauman and John Yoon contributed reporting.
Reporting from Washington
Rabbi Shira Stutman, the founder of the Sixth & I Historic Synagogue in Washington, showed up midmorning on Thursday at the Capital Jewish Museum to pray and mourn.
It was something she just needed to do, she said, after two Israeli Embassy aides — a young couple — were shot and killed the night before while leaving the museum, where the American Jewish Committee was hosting a reception for young diplomats.
Several hundred thousand people compose the Jewish community in the Greater Washington area, including Northern Virginia and suburban Maryland, making it one of the biggest Jewish population centers in the country. Yet it is a very close community, the rabbi said.
“This could have been one of our kids,” Rabbi Stutman, who lives in Washington but now leads a congregation in Colorado, said of the shootings.
For many young people, politically active or not, Wednesday night’s reception at the Capital Jewish Museum would have been a networking opportunity — or even a chance to find a potential husband or a wife, Rabbi Stutman said. Such events are very popular in the Washington area among young Jewish people who want to socialize while supporting a cause.
But no one thought the night would end as it did. Not here. Not in the nation’s capital.
Ron Halber, chief executive of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington, called the killings “a political assassination” and “the nightmare that we’ve all been afraid of.”
He said he had always told friends that he was lucky to live in the Washington area because violence against the Jewish community was uncommon there.
“We haven’t seen a major incident in 50, 60 years,” Mr. Halber said. “Now that record has been broken.”
Jewish organizations in the area are still trying to process what happened, some leaders say, and several expect to hold official vigils for the couple.
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Elias Rodriguez, the suspect in the killings of two Israeli Embassy aides in Washington on Wednesday night, was filmed on surveillance video as he walked past his two imminent victims, then turned to face their backs, fired several times, and fired more shots after they fell to the ground, according to an F.B.I. affidavit filed on Thursday.
The video captured the scene on the street outside the Capital Jewish Museum, where the victims, Sarah Milgrim, 26, and Yaron Lischinsky, 30, were leaving a reception for young diplomats shortly after 9 p.m. Wednesday.
After being shot, Ms. Milgrim tried to crawl away, the affidavit said, but Mr. Rodriguez “followed behind her and fired again.” During a pause, while it appeared that he was reloading his weapon, Ms. Milgrim sat up, the affidavit said, and Mr. Rodriguez fired several more times.
The affidavit said that Ms. Milgrim sustained “multiple gunshot wounds” and was transported to the office of the chief medical examiner for the District of Columbia, where she was pronounced dead.
Mr. Lischinsky was pronounced dead at the scene, according to the affidavit.
Mr. Rodriguez had flown from Chicago to the Washington area on Tuesday with a gun declared in his checked baggage, the affidavit said. A witness’s account in the document describes Mr. Rodriguez making a “motion with his arm as if he was throwing an object.” Nearby, the police recovered a 9-millimeter handgun, 21 spent cartridge casings and a firearm magazine, according to the affidavit. The gun was empty.
The shooting suspect was in Washington to attend a professional conference, officials said. He flew into Reagan National Airport on Tuesday with his legal firearm, but investigators have yet to account for all of his actions in the day between his arrival and the shooting.
Law enforcement officials would not say at a news conference if security lapses at the museum had allowed the gunman access to the event’s attendees. Mayor Muriel Bowser of Washington said that the gathering was “small,” and had not been classified as a “special event” warranting the deployment of city police.
At his arraignment in federal court, the suspect, Elias Rodriguez, sat calmly in a white jumpsuit with his hands folded in front of him. He did not enter a plea.
Jeanine Pirro, the interim U.S. attorney in Washington, said at a news conference that the shooting was “a death penalty-eligible case.” But she added that it was “far too early” to say whether prosecutors would pursue capital punishment.
Chief Pamela Smith of the Metropolitan Police Department said at a news conference that her officers and federal agents were working to analyze the suspect’s activities in Washington before the shooting.
At a news conference, Jeanine Pirro, the interim U.S. attorney in Washington, called the killings “a horrific crime.” She added, “We’re going to continue to investigate this as a hate crime, and a crime of terrorism, and we will add additional charges as the evidence warrants.” She said investigators were reviewing “massive amounts of evidence.”
Elias Rodriguez, the shooting suspect, is being read his rights at an appearance in federal court in Washington, represented by a public defender. He calmly told Magistrate Judge Matthew J. Sharbaugh his background and listened solemnly as the judge said he faced the possibility of the death penalty as punishment for the list of crimes he is accused of, including two counts of first-degree murder.
An F.B.I. agent’s affidavit says the suspect approached his two victims after they fell to the ground, firing additional rounds as they sat up or tried to crawl away. “Once the decedents fell to the ground,” the agent wrote, the suspect was “captured on the video advancing closer to the decedents, leaning over with them with his arm extended, and firing several more times.”
The Justice Department charged Elias Rodriguez, of Chicago, with murder of foreign officials, first-degree murder and other crimes this afternoon in the shooting deaths of two Israeli Embassy employees in Washington on Wednesday night.
The weapon found at the crime scene was a 9-millimeter pistol that did not appear to have been purchased recently. The suspect transported the gun legally and appears to have retrieved it when he flew to Ronald Reagan National Airport recently, according to officials familiar with the situation.
In the suburbs of Kansas City, there is a long established Jewish community that is active beyond its modest numbers. The rabbis of the different synagogues all know each other, and families are often members of more than one congregation.
“We’re very close knit,” said Rabbi Stephanie Kramer of The Temple, Congregation B’nai Jehudah in Overland Park, Kan. “We’re not big enough to not be.”
Sarah Milgrim grew up here, leading the life of an American teenage girl: sleepovers, high school choir tours, late night conversations with friends. She was an idealist and a lover of animals — she had a pet rabbit named Pablo — and was determined to make a difference in the world, perhaps by working to protect the environment, said Emma Chalk, a close friend since middle school.
But as she grew older, people that knew her said, Ms. Milgrim developed a deeper commitment to her own Jewish identity.
This commitment led her on trips to Israel, where friends said she found a sense of purpose in working with young Israelis and Palestinians, and it eventually led her to a position at the Israeli embassy in Washington, starting just weeks after the Hamas attack on Oct. 7.
On Wednesday night, her job brought her to a reception at the Capital Jewish Museum, where she was one of two embassy employees fatally shot in what the authorities say was an attack by a gunman proclaiming support for the Palestinian cause.
“Since Oct. 7, we’ve all seen a rise in antisemitism, a rise in hate speech,” said Jay Lewis, the president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Kansas City. “But this was direct violence on one of our own. It got very personal, very fast.”
Reporting from Washington
More than 50 years ago, an Israeli diplomat was gunned down in his driveway in suburban Maryland after returning from a dinner party.
On Wednesday night, two staff members at the Israeli Embassy were fatally shot as they left an event organized by the American Jewish Committee at the Capital Jewish Museum. The suspect, the police say, shouted, “Free, free Palestine,” after he was in custody.
The earlier case remained unsolved, but the parallels between the shootings are stark, echoing a combustible chapter in Israeli-Palestinian relations in which violence flared around the globe.
“It was a time of heightened tensions between Palestinians and Israelis just as they are today,” said Eugene Casey, a retired F.B.I. agent who investigated the killing of Col. Yosef Alon, the military attaché who was shot five times.
Since Hamas’s devastating attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and Israel’s large-scale response, pro-Palestinian protests spread across the United States, including at Israeli consulates and college campuses, during the grinding conflict in Gaza.
The Trump administration and Israel are among those who have accused the protesters of promoting antisemitism and inciting violence against Jews with inflammatory rhetoric. Demonstrators and their supporters have denied the accusations and most of the protests have been nonviolent.
“Some believe the Oct. 7 terror attack was a just solution to a political problem,” said Lara Burns, a retired F.B.I. agent who investigated Hamas for years. “And the normalization of that narrative provides a foundation for the advocacy of violence against the Jewish people and it manifested itself yesterday.”
“The conflict is not just limited to the Middle East,” added Ms. Burns, who leads terrorism research at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism. “And it is on our doorstep today.”
Before Colonel Alon’s murder, tensions were also high across the world and in the United States. Months earlier, members of a Palestinian terrorist group known as Black September attacked Israeli citizens on German soil at the 1972 Olympic Games. The events played out on live television, shocking viewers.
A terrorist with suspected ties to Black September tried to detonate three car bombs in New York City in March 1973. The bombs were timed to coincide with a visit by Prime Minister Golda Meir of Israel.
Eventually, the violence arrived at the doorstep of Mr. Alon, a decorated fighter pilot who had settled in Chevy Chase, Md., with his wife and three daughters. He had been sent to the United States to make sure that Israel had access to advanced fighters in the event of war with surrounding Arab countries.
After he arrived home that night, parking in his driveway, his wife exited the car first, gunshots ringing out the second she reached the porch. The attackers fled and she was spared. The assassination triggered a major F.B.I. investigation.
Mr. Alon’s killing was never solved, though the C.I.A. suspected Palestinian terrorists carried out the plot. As part of his investigation, Mr. Casey interviewed Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, the Venezuelan terrorist known as Carlos the Jackal who is imprisoned in France.
He told Mr. Casey that Americans who sympathized with the plight of the Palestinians were behind the operation. Mr. Casey retired before he could interview a list of people who might have been involved, leaving the case unsolved.
By contrast, a suspect was quickly identified in the shooting late Wednesday. The police, naming the gunman as Elias Rodriguez, said he was spotted pacing in front of the museum beforehand. He approached four people who were leaving the event, shooting two embassy aides and then entered the museum, where he was detained by security officers. Investigators descended on his home in Chicago the next day.
The F.B.I. was investigating whether he left behind clues pointing to the reasons behind the attack, a law enforcement official said, and whether the shooting was indeed a hate crime. A post on social media on Wednesday night from an account that The New York Times verified as belonging to the suspect condemned the Israeli and American governments. His writings also cite Israeli military actions against Palestinians, but they do not mention the approximately 1,200 men, women and children slain on Oct. 7 in Israel, the single deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.
Despite the similarities in the two cases, there is one important difference, Mr. Casey said.
“It’s tragic, but the families will have some closure,” he said. “I was glad the guy was captured at the scene unlike our case. I wish we had DNA back in 1973. There will be no open questions about who killed them.”
Mr. Casey said he still felt “terrible” that Mr. Alon’s case remained unsolved. In the wake of the latest killings, he added, he hoped the F.B.I. picks up where he left off in 2017 and finally puts the case to rest.
Reporting from Jerusalem
The evening they were fatally shot, two employees of the Israeli Embassy in Washington attended a reception focused on humanitarian diplomacy and improving the delivery of aid to Gaza and the broader Middle East.
The event at the Capital Jewish Museum — an annual gathering for young diplomats hosted by the American Jewish Committee — featured a keynote panel discussion with Israeli and American humanitarian leaders. The panelists spoke about their experiences working together for over a year in Gaza and discussed the potential to expand aid delivery pathways into the Palestinian coastal strip.
On their way out, the two embassy employees — Yaron Lischinsky, 30, and Sarah Milgrim, 26 — introduced themselves to one of the speakers, Ran Goldstein, the Washington-based humanitarian representative for the Israeli relief organization IsraAID. According to Mr. Goldstein, Mr. Lischinsky and Ms. Milgrim expressed appreciation for the role of humanitarian efforts in conflict zones.
Mr. Goldstein said that he and a fellow panelist, Hope Leone — who represents the Multifaith Alliance, an American nonprofit organization that has been providing assistance in Syria for about a decade — discussed their continuing collaboration to get aid into Gaza and the significant challenges that come with it.
“We tried to inspire some hope in the young diplomats by discussing unlikely collaborations and the power of humanitarian diplomacy,” Mr. Goldstein said.
After chatting with Mr. Goldstein, Mr. Lischinsky and Ms. Milgrim stepped outside the Capital Jewish Museum and were shot at close range. Both later died. A suspect is being questioned by Washington police in conjunction with the F.B.I.’s counterterrorism team.
Mr. Goldstein said that after the shooting, the suspect entered the building and was initially thought to be a confused bystander who had fled the scene. Someone even offered him a glass of water.
Then, Mr. Goldstein said, the suspect chanted, “Free, free Palestine.”
“At first, we thought he was a protester,” Mr. Goldstein said. “Only when it dawned on us that someone from the event had been harmed by the shooting — and the police jumped on him — did it become clear he was the shooter.”
The gun used in the killings was purchased legally in Illinois and brought to Washington by the suspect, Elias Rodriguez, according to two officials briefed on the initial trace of the weapon by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
A post on social media Wednesday night from an account that The New York Times verified belonged to the suspect condemned the Israeli and American governments, and what he called atrocities committed by the Israeli military against Palestinians.
Michael Shear recently returned to London after three weeks reporting on the Middle East in Israel.
The slaying of two Israeli Embassy aides on Wednesday outside a Jewish museum in Washington was an extreme example of what law enforcement officials and others call a global surge in antisemitic incidents that emerged after Hamas terrorists killed more than 1,200 people and seized 250 hostages on Oct. 7, 2023.
Across the world, offenses against Jewish people and property have doubled or even tripled since the Hamas attacks and have remained at historically high levels as Israel has waged a 19-month bombing campaign and aid blockade that the Gaza Health Ministry says has killed more than 50,000 Palestinians.
Groups that monitor hate crimes around the world said the Hamas attack and the subsequent war had helped fuel tens of thousands of incidents, including cases of verbal abuse, a torrent of online attacks on social media, Nazi-themed vandalism, personal threats and violent attacks resulting in injury and death.
“Everywhere across the board, you had more incidents than before Oct. 7 — that impression is lasting,” said Professor Uriya Shavit, the director of the Religious Studies Program at Tel Aviv University, which produces one of the most comprehensive annual reports on the level of antisemitism worldwide.
Professor Shavit and others said it could be difficult to clearly define what qualifies as an antisemitic incident at a time of heightened political outrage around the world, especially about the humanitarian impact of Israel’s conduct in the war. The complexity of the issue was underscored during the 2024 protests at universities in the United States, where administrators and police officers struggled to confront both legitimate political expression and abusive or hateful incidents.
Despite the intensity of feelings about the conflict, most of the cases of reported antisemitism around the globe fall far short of the kind of extreme violence that erupted on Wednesday outside the Capital Jewish Museum, where the American Jewish Committee was hosting a reception for young diplomats in Washington.
“There is such a merging and mixing of ideologies and of content and language,” said Dave Rich, the director of policy at Community Security Trust, a Jewish nonprofit in London that tracks antisemitism in Britain. “Lots of people who are not active extremists in the way most people would understand it will still use extremist language.”
But even so, experts say the trends are clear: Data collected from police departments, government agencies and nonprofit organizations around the world suggest that officials are struggling to contain the biggest wave of hate-fueled incidents against Jews that has been recorded in decades.
In France, there were 1,570 antisemitic incidents in 2024, down slightly from the year before but still a 260 percent increase over 2022, according to the latest Tel Aviv University report. In Germany, the number of cases involving expressions of hatred against Jews doubled in 2023 to 5,671, the study found, and fell to 5,177 in 2024. Similar trends were evident in antisemitic reports from Argentina, Canada, Australia, Mexico and elsewhere.
In Britain, the number of antisemitic incidents in 2024 was 112 percent higher than it was two years before, rising to 3,528, from 1,662, according to data compiled by Community Security Trust, which called the increase the “result of the enduring levels of anti-Jewish hate observed in the U.K. since the Hamas terror attack.”
Of those cases, 201, or about 6 percent, were incidents of assault or other physical attacks on Jewish people in Britain. About half of the 3,528 incidents involved inflammatory speech about the Israel-Hamas conflict alongside explicit expressions of anti-Jewish language, motivation or targeting. The center does not include in its data statements that are only expressions of political belief, Mr. Rich said.
In the United States, the war and the pro-Palestinian movement have amped up tensions and fears about antisemitism. The shooting at the museum is the type of development that many Jews, as well as some Jewish scholars and activists, have been worried about and warning about. They argue that the explosion of antisemitic language has already led to violent personal attacks.
“You can’t draw a direct line from the campus to the gun,” said David Wolpe, who’s the emeritus rabbi of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles and who was a visiting scholar at Harvard Divinity School as campus protests broke out there last year.
“But the campuses normalized hate and anathematized Jews,” Rabbi Wolpe said. “Against that backdrop, violence is as unsurprising as it is appalling. After all, ‘globalize the intifada’ looks a lot like this.”
Antisemitic incidents in the United States range from the physical to the verbal, from the subtle to the overt.
Federal prosecutors said a North Carolina man mailed an antisemitic threat to a rabbi at Temple Beth Israel in Macon, Ga., in February 2024. The postcard the man had sent included the phrase “GASTHEJEWS” and showed a drawing of a person wearing a rat costume with the words “JEWS ARE RATS,” the authorities said. The man was federally charged earlier this month with one count of mailing threatening communications.
Weeks after the Oct. 7 attack in 2023, a ride-share driver at San Francisco International Airport in California punched a customer in the face whom he perceived to be Jewish or Israeli, the authorities said. The driver, a 39-year-old California man, was arrested in March and charged with committing a federal hate crime, prosecutors said.
In most countries, the number of incidents of hate directed at Jews is down slightly from the peak in the weeks after the Oct. 7 attack. But Professor Shavit at Tel Aviv University called Wednesday’s killing of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, two members of the staff at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, a grim reminder of the hate that Jews still face around the world.
“I felt sad,” he said, “when you see such a lovely young couple that’s on the verge of actualizing their dreams in life, you know, at sort of the nicest point in life.”
Yechiel Leiter, the Israeli ambassador, said at a news conference that Mr. Lischinsky and Ms. Milgrim had been about to be engaged. The police said the suspect in the attack in Washington exclaimed, “Free, free Palestine,” when he was taken in custody after a close-range shooting outside the museum shortly after 9 p.m.
The shooting prompted fresh outcries from political leaders around the world, including President Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, both of whom expressed outrage at what they called evidence of antisemitic hatred. Mr. Trump wrote on his social media platform that “these horrible D.C. killings, based obviously on antisemitism, must end, NOW!”
The incident also appeared to echo a series of incidents involving Israeli diplomatic outposts around the world in the last 19 months.
Last summer, Molotov cocktails were thrown at Israeli Embassies in Mexico City and Bucharest, Romania. A man wielding a crossbow attacked the Israeli Embassy in Belgrade, Serbia, last June. An attacker opened fire on the Israeli Consulate in Munich in September, and two months later grenades were detonated near the Israeli Embassy in Copenhagen.
Last August, two cars exploded outside the Beth Yaacov synagogue in La Grande Motte, a resort town on the southern coast of France, in what prosecutors called an act of terrorism. And in the United States, the home of the Pennsylvania governor, Josh Shapiro, who is Jewish, was firebombed. The suspect cited Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.
Walter Reich, a professor of international affairs, ethics and human behavior at George Washington University, said the conflict in Gaza had exposed historical hatred of Jews that had been somewhat held at bay in the decades after World War II and the Holocaust.
“But in recent years it has returned with a fury,” Mr. Reich said. “Pent-up violence against Jews has exploded globally. Often masquerading as anti-Zionism, it has targeted both Jews and their state. And it has resumed a violent hatred that has been the norm, not the exception, for over 2,000 years.”
There has been an increase in the number of hate crimes against other groups as well, experts say. Overall hate crimes in the United States have doubled in the last decade, rising to nearly 12,000 by the end of 2023 from under 6,000 in 2014, according to data about hate crimes reported to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
But the increase in anti-Jewish incidents has far outpaced that of every other group, according to those who compile the statistics. That has left many Jews around the world rattled and feeling unsafe. Some Jews say they are held to a standard that no other group is, with critics holding them collectively accountable for policies in Israel.
Rabbi Moshe Hauer, executive vice president of the Orthodox Union, one of the largest umbrella groups of Orthodox Jews in the United States, said in a statement, “These antisemitic murders committed in our nation’s capital are a direct result of the organized and effective effort to demonize the Jewish state and to build hatred and encourage violence toward anyone associated with Israel.”
Michael Herzog, who served as Israel’s ambassador to Washington from late 2021 until January, said the attack had not “come as a surprise” to him.
The embassy staff had felt constantly under threat since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which started the war in Gaza, Mr. Herzog said in a telephone interview. Citing the large pro-Palestinian protests that have taken place outside the embassy and the ambassador’s residence, he said he felt it was only a matter of time until “a brainwashed person might pick up a weapon and carry out a shooting attack.”
Anemona Hartocollis, Ruth Graham, Lizzie Dearden and Isabel Kershner contributed reporting.
The Muslim Public Affairs Council, a nonprofit that works on policies affecting American Muslims and that has strongly condemned Israel’s conduct of the war with Hamas in Gaza, “unequivocally” denounced the killing of two Israeli Embassy staffers in Washington in a statement: “Now more than ever, we must reject hatred and division, whether it’s antisemitism or scapegoating of any group.”
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, began today’s press briefing by saying that President Trump was “saddened and outraged” by the killings of the two young Israeli Embassy employees, and that the Justice Department would be “prosecuting the perpetrator responsible for this to the fullest extent of the law.”
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. He said the F.B.I. hoped to have updates as to the authenticity “very soon.”
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 man accused of killing two Israeli Embassy aides in Washington published a post on the social media site X on Wednesday evening that condemned the Israeli and American governments and what he called atrocities committed by the Israeli military against Palestinians.
Under the title “Escalate For Gaza, Bring The War Home,” the suspect, Elias Rodriguez, condemned what he called atrocities committed by the Israeli military against Palestinians. The post did not refer directly to the shooting on Wednesday evening, but it justified “armed action.”
Mr. 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.
The email address that Mr. Rodriguez used to sign up to LinkedIn was also used for a registration on X, the site that linked to his justification on Wednesday night. The same username and variations of it were used in other websites, including the social media site Clubhouse, which displayed Mr. Rodriguez’s full name and face.
He posted video from a pro-Palestinian march in Chicago on X in 2023. He also was photographed participating in a protest in 2017 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.
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