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Authorities on Thursday were investigating a brazen attack that killed two young Israeli embassy staff members outside an event at the Jewish museum in downtown Washington DC, leaving the US capital in shock as world leaders condemned the “horrible” and “antisemitic” shootings.
Early on Thursday morning, federal agents in tactical gear descended on a Chicago apartment believed to be the alleged gunman’s home. According to a post on X from the FBI’s Washington field office, agents in Chicago were “conducting court-authorized law enforcement activity” that it said was “in relation to yesterday’s tragic shooting in Washington, DC”.
The US attorney general, Pam Bondi, said that US authorities believed the suspect acted alone. “We are doing everything we can to protect our entire community, and especially our Jewish community right now,” said Bondi, who was at the crime scene with the local US attorney, Jeanine Pirro. “It was horrific,” she added.
At the White House, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Donald Trump was “saddened and outraged” by the deadly act and vowed that the US Department of Justice “will be prosecuting the perpetrator of this to the full extent of the law”. She said Trump spoke with Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday.
The killings occurred shortly after 9pm on Wednesday evening, outside the Capital Jewish Museum, where, according to officials, a gunman approached a group leaving an event hosted by the American Jewish Committee and opened fire at close range.
The victims, identified as Yaron Lischinsky, who grew up in Germany and Israel, and Sarah Milgrim, a US citizen from Kansas, were a young couple about to be engaged, according to Yechiel Leiter, the Israeli ambassador to the US. Leiter told reporters Lischinsky had “purchased a ring this week with the intention of proposing to his girlfriend next week in Jerusalem”.
The suspect, identified as Elias Rodriguez, was observed pacing outside the museum before the shooting, the Metropolitan police chief, Pamela Smith, said. After opening fire, he walked into the museum, was detained by event security and began to chant “Free, free Palestine,” she said.
Officials have said the suspect was not on any security watchlists and there were no heightened security threats before the shooting. The firearm believed to be used in the killings was retrieved as well, officials said.
The FBI deputy director, Dan Bongino, said the suspect was interviewed by authorities within hours of being taken into custody. Officials were aware of “certain writings” possibly authored by the suspect that have been circulated online, he wrote in a post on X, adding: “We hope to have updates as to the authenticity very soon.”
The flags at Israeli diplomatic missions around the world were lowered to half-mast, and Netanyahu ordered security to be stepped up following what he called “the horrifying antisemitic murder”.
The attack comes as Israel expanded its ground offensive in Gaza, and faces growing international pressure, including from the US, to end its nearly three-month long blockade of food, medicine and other supplies that humanitarian groups say has pushed the enclave to the brink of famine.
The shooting occurred in an area of the US capital crowded with federal buildings and embassies. The Capital Jewish Museum is located steps from the FBI’s Washington field office. In a social media post, Bongino said “early indicators are that this is an act of targeted violence”.
Leaders in the US and Israel have said the attack was part of what Netanyahu called “the terrible price of antisemitism and wild incitement against Israel”.
“When antisemitism is normalized, that’s where we start to see the real danger that results in the violence we saw last night,” Ted Deutch, a former Florida congressman and the chief executive of the American Jewish Committee, which had put on the reception for young diplomats on Wednesday night, said in an interview on MSNBC. “Everyone has a role to play in making sure that doesn’t happen.”
In a social media post early on Thursday, Trump wrote: “These horrible D.C. killings, based obviously on antisemitism, must end, NOW! Hatred and Radicalism have no place in the USA.”
Gideon Sa’ar, the Israeli foreign minister, blamed critics of the Israeli government, including the “leaders and officials of many countries and international organizations, especially from Europe” for inciting violence and hatred against his country since the Israel-Hamas war began on 7 October 2023.
France on Thursday denounced Sa’ar’s comments as “unjustified” and “outrageous”. “France has condemned, France condemns and France will continue to condemn, always and unequivocally, any act of antisemitism,” the foreign ministry spokesperson Christophe Lemoine said.
International criticism of Israel over the Gaza war has risen in recent weeks. On Tuesday, in an unprecedented, joint statement with Canada and the UK, France condemned “the appalling language” of members of Netanyahu’s government, and the “outrageous actions” and the “intolerable level of suffering” of civilians.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) condemned the deadly attack as “completely unacceptable” and said that political violence “only undermines the pursuit of justice”.
“While millions of Americans feel extreme frustration at the sight of the Israeli government slaughtering Palestinian men, women and children on a daily basis with weapons paid for with our taxpayer dollars, political violence is an unacceptable crime and is not the answer,” the group said in a statement.
Tributes poured in for the slain victims of the attack from the US and overseas as those who knew Lischinsky and Milgrim described the couple as “bright” and “talented”.
Lischinsky, 30, who worked as a research assistant in the political department of the Israeli embassy in Washington, was born in Nuremberg, according to the Israeli ambassador to Germany, Ron Prosor. “He was a Christian, a true lover of Israel, served in the IDF, and chose to dedicate his life to the State of Israel and the Zionist cause,” he wrote on X, sharing that he came to know Lischinsky as his master’s student at Reichman University in Israel.
Milgrim, 26, an American from Kansas, organized trips to Israel, according to a spokesperson for the Israeli foreign ministry, officials said. She was also a volunteer with Tech2Peace, an advocacy group training young Palestinians and Israelis and promoting dialogue between them, according to the organization.
KU Hillel, a Jewish student organization at her alma mater, the University of Kansas, described Milgrim as a “bright spirit” whose “passion for the Jewish community touched everyone fortunate enough to know her”. Those who knew her best said she was “the definition of the best person”, the statement said.
Lischinsky was preparing to propose to Milgrim when they traveled to Jerusalem next week to meet his family, according to officials. Lischinsky had purchased an engagement ring, which Miligram’s family only learned of after the shooting.
“The ironic part is that we were worried for our daughter’s safety in Israel,” her father, Robert Milgrim, told the New York Times in an interview. “But she was murdered three days before going.”
