The US Justice Department said Elias Rodriguez, 31, has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder, as well as other charges, including the murder of foreign officials.
An affidavit filed by an FBI agent in support of the criminal complaint said that as police escorted Rodriguez from the building, he shouted, “Free Palestine.”
The document said police reviewed security footage showing Rodriguez walking past the victims outside the museum, then turning, pulling a firearm from his waistband, and shooting them in the back.
After the victims fell to the ground, he approached them and fired several more times, as Milgrim attempted to crawl away from him. Milgrim then sat up while Rodriguez reloaded, and he shot her again, the video shows, according to the affidavit.
Investigators recovered 21 empty shell cases and a 9mm handgun from the scene that matched a firearm Rodriguez purchased in Illinois in 2020. He flew from Chicago to Virginia with the firearm in his checked baggage, the affidavit said. He had declared the firearm for the flight.
Rodriguez later told detectives that he admired Aaron Bushnell, an anti-Israel activist who self-immolated outside the Israeli embassy last year in protest, calling Bushnell a “martyr.” Rodriguez, a 30-year-old from Chicago, also said he had bought a ticket to the event at the museum three hours before it started.
The case is being investigated by the FBI and Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department, and is being prosecuted by the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia.
Israel’s ambassador to the US, Yechiel Leiter, said the attacker was inside the event before the attack.
“He milled around inside the event. We still don’t know exactly what he said, but he said enough that they removed him,” Leiter said at a press briefing at the scene of the attack. “He went outside, waited for embassy workers to come out, and shot them.”
Three others escaped the shooting unharmed, Leiter said.
At his first appearance in court on Thursday, the suspect waived his right to a detention hearing, and a preliminary hearing in the case was set for June 18.
Rodriguez said little during the proceeding except to answer, “I do” to questions from a federal magistrate judge about whether he understood his rights.
FBI agents were seen at his apartment in Chicago on Thursday, where law enforcement blocked off the street.
‘He never should have made it inside that building’: Security lapses in DC museum killings
[IsraelTimes] Head of local Jewish community relations council calls to ‘extend the perimeter around our institutions,’ notes finite resources limit extent to which possible targets can be hardened
On Wednesday night, three armed security officers stood guard as the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington held its annual meeting in the nation’s capital. On the agenda: discussions about the various ways antisemitic rhetoric can lead to violence.
Hours later, JCRC CEO Ron Halber said, he found out about the deadly shooting of two Israeli embassy staff at the Capital Jewish Museum. It was a nightmare come to life.
“It’s just godawful. There’s no other way to describe it. It was a horrific, antisemitic, anti-Israel, violent attack,” Halber told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency Thursday. “For years I’ve said in Washington, we’re lucky we’ve never had anything” of this magnitude attacking the Jewish community. “That record came to an end last night.”
In the attack’s aftermath, Jewish community professionals including Halber are refocusing, again, on how to protect their institutions from threats. The shooting has also raised urgent questions: What went wrong? And what needs to change?
“Why they failed tonight we obviously have to figure out,” Eric Fingerhut, CEO of the Jewish Federations of North America, said in an interview with JTA hours after the shooting, regarding security.
He added later, “The risks have continued to rise as antisemitism has risen and as anti-Israel behavior in America has risen and our security teams have worked so hard to keep up with that. They obviously didn’t succeed tonight but we will not stop until we’ve ensured the security of our community.”
The timeline of the attack is relatively clear and, to security analysts, troubling: According to reports, the attacker shot his victims, the couple Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, on the street outside the museum as the event, organized by the American Jewish Committee, was winding down.
He then walked inside the museum, where an eyewitness said organizers offered him water and he remained for around 10 minutes until police arrived and he confessed to the shooting. Both elements of the incident — that the attacker was able to reach his victims outside the event and then proceed inside for an extended period of time — indicate missteps, according to security professionals.
“What concerned me as a seasoned law enforcement official is in all the work and the efforts that we put into training civilians, his behavior was almost literally screaming that there’s an issue here,” said Paul Goldenberg, the former head of the Secure Community Network, which coordinates security for Jewish institutions nationwide. Goldenberg said that in a widely circulated video of the suspect entering the building, he appeared nervous and disheveled, with jerky movements.
Goldenberg says in the future, rank-and-file attendees need to be aware of those signs — and act on them by alerting someone.
“The second he walked in after the shooting there should have been a plan,” added Goldenberg, who is now the chief policy adviser and head of global policing at Rutgers University’s Miller Center on Policing. “If we know that he just shot individuals outside, whatever security was in place, he never should have made it inside that building.”
Neither the AJC nor the museum immediately responded to JTA queries about who was responsible for security on Wednesday night. But by Thursday afternoon, five of the leading Jewish groups that focus on security put out a series of security recommendations for future events.
The recommendations focus principally on expanding the security perimeter of events; withholding the details of events and vetting attendees; and coordinating with law enforcement or hiring security guards.
The AJC had done at least some of that: The invitation said the location would be “shared upon registration.”
“The Jewish community is already among the most hardened targets in the country,” Oren Segal, who oversees the ADL’s Center on Extremism, told JTA prior to the recommendations being publicized. “Bulletproof glass and metal detectors is the norm. And the question is, how broad does the perimeter need to be for the Jews to feel secure?”
Leading up to the event, the museum was broadly conscious of threats. The day before the shooting, it had announced a new security grant from the local DC government — one that Halber said the JCRC had helped arrange — in connection to a new exhibit on LGBTQ Jews.
The $30,000 grant was meant to help the museum cover the costs of security guards both at the front desk and roaming around the museum “to make sure that everybody is safe and that we are prepared in the event of an emergency,” executive director Beatrice Gurwitz told local news at the time. She added that the grant “also helps our staff prepare.”
Washington shooting suspect was anti-Israel activist, railed against Seattle’s ‘whitening’
[IsraelTimes] Elias Rodriguez, 31, had ‘Tikkun Olam means FREE PALESTINE’ sign in home window, was linked to Party for Socialism and Liberation; apparent manifesto called to ‘bring the war home’
Long. Key associations mentioned: - Signs in window: “Proud Union Home,” “Justice for Wadea”
- Jewish Voice for Peace (founded by Hamas BDS activist Hatem Bazian, while its social media managers live in Lebanon and a large chunk of its funding comes from the Soros Open Society Foundations)
- Party for Socialism and Liberation - Chicago
- ANSWER Chicago (formerly known as International A.N.S.W.E.R.)
Yesterday we learnt that Mr. Rodriguez‘s father, Eric Rodriguez, was an activist for veteran’s and federal workers’ rights, for which he was honoured by Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García (D-Ill.), who brought him to see President Trump’s joint speech to Congress in March. This report adds that he had served in the Army National Guard, which sent him to Iraq. |
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