WASHINGTON — A Chicago man made his first court appearance to face murder charges in the shooting of two Israeli embassy staff members outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, in what officials have called an antisemitic hate crime.
Elias Rodriguez, 31, appeared in Washington federal court Thursday before U.S. Magistrate Matthew Sharbaugh. He didn’t enter a plea. The judge ordered him to remain in custody and set a preliminary hearing for June 18.
Rodriguez was charged with two counts of murder, murder of foreign officials, causing the death of a person using a firearm and discharging a firearm during a crime of violence, according to a criminal complaint filed with the court. If convicted, he faces the possibility of the death penalty or life in prison.
Authorities allege Rodriguez killed the two embassy staffers on Wednesday night and then shouted “Free Palestine” as he was taken into custody. The victims of the shootings, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, were a couple that planned to get engaged next week in Jerusalem, Israeli Ambassador Yechiel Leiter said. The Federal Bureau of Investigation said it was investigating whether there are potential ties to hate crimes.
“This is a horrific crime and these crimes are not going to be tolerated by me or this office,” Jeanine Pirro, the interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, said at a press conference Thursday. “A young couple at the beginning of their life’s journey about to be engaged in another country had their bodies removed in the cold of the night, in a foreign city in a body bag. We are not going to tolerate that anymore.”
Pirro said the case is eligible for the death penalty, but prosecutors haven’t yet decided whether to seek it.
Heightened tensions
The shooting in Washington comes amid heightened tensions following the war between Israel and Hamas, which the U.S. designates a terrorist organization. Hamas launched an invasion on Oct. 7, 2023, killing 1,200 Israelis and taking 250 hostages. The Hamas-run health ministry claims that more than 53,000 Palestinians have died in the ongoing conflict, though the ministry does not distinguish between combatants and civilians. Israel has lost more than 400 soldiers in the fighting.
Steve Jensen, the assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Washington Field Office, called the killings “both an act of terror and directed violence against the Jewish community.”
Investigators are examining Rodriguez’s electronic devices and online presence, including a set of writings that may have been authored by him, according to Jensen. The FBI is working to determine whether the documents could be considered a manifesto and if they pointed to an ideological motive, he said.
Rodriguez was arrested at the museum after presenting himself to police and saying, “I did it for Palestine, I did it for Gaza,” according to the criminal complaint.
Rodriguez flew from Chicago to Reagan National Airport on Tuesday and carried a firearm in his checked baggage, according to the charging document. Authorities determined that the 9mm handgun recovered from the scene of the shooting on Wednesday had been purchased by Rodriguez in Illinois in March 2020, the court filing showed.
Officials and politicians on both sides of the aisles have condemned the attack. “These horrible D.C. killings, based obviously on antisemitism, must end, NOW!” President Donald Trump said in a statement on Truth Social. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said the act “seems to be another horrific instance of antisemitism which as we know is all too rampant in our society.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the shooting as a deliberate act of violence against Jews. “Yaron and Sarah weren’t the victims of a random crime,” Netanyahu said in a statement Thursday. “The terrorist who cruelly gunned them down did so for one reason and one reason alone — he wanted to kill Jews.”
The case is U.S. v. Rodriguez, 25-mj-91, US District Court, District of Columbia (Washington).
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