Soon-to-Be-Engaged Couple Gunned Down at Jewish Museum in DC

A gunman opened fire outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., Wednesday night, taking the lives of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, a soon-to-be-engaged couple who worked at the Israeli Embassy.  

“The couple that was gunned down tonight in the name of ‘free Palestine,’ was a young couple about to be engaged,” according to Yechiel Leiter, the Israeli ambassador to the U.S.  

Lischinsky had just purchased a ring and planned to propose to Milgrim in Jerusalem next week. “They were a beautiful couple,” Leiter said. 

The suspect, identified as 30-year-old Elias Rodriguez from Chicago, entered the museum following the shooting and shouted, “Free, free Palestine” as authorities arrested him.  

The couple was shot at “close range while attending a Jewish event at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington DC,” Tal Naim Cohen, spokesperson at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, said in a statement.  

President Donald Trump reacted to the news early Thursday morning, writing on Truth Social: “These horrible D.C. killings, based obviously on antisemitism, must end, NOW! Hatred and radicalism have no place in the USA. Condolences to the families of the victims. So sad that such things as this can happen! God Bless You ALL!”

Vice President JD Vance said his “heart breaks” for the couple, adding in a post on X that “[a]ntisemitic violence has no place in the United States.”

“We’re praying for their families and all of our friends at the Israeli Embassy, where the two victims worked,” Vance said.

The young couple was “in the prime of their lives,” the embassy wrote in a post on X.  

“The entire embassy staff is heartbroken and devastated by their murder. No words can express the depth of our grief and horror at this devastating loss. Our hearts are with their families, and the embassy will be by their side during this terrible time.”  

The shooting is “the direct result of toxic antisemitic incitement against Israel and Jews around the world that has been going on since the Oct. 7^th massacre,” Gideon Sa’ar, Israel’s foreign affairs minister, said Thursday.  

Following the shooting, New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, directed the “NYPD to increase security at sensitive locations for the Jewish community here in NYC.”

“This act of hateful violence is exactly what it means to globalize the intifada. Let me be clear — antisemitic violence has no place in our country,” Adams wrote on X.

The shooting “has the full attention of your FBI,” Dan Bongino, deputy director of the FBI, said Thursday morning.

“Targeted acts of antisemitic violence are typically carried out by spineless, gutless cowards,” Bongino wrote on X. “And the penalties will be harsh as we tighten up this investigation and run down any additional leads.”

Lischinsky, according to The Times of Israel, moved to Israel from Germany when he was 16. In 2022, Lischinsky came to the U.S. to work at the embassy. The young man earned a master’s in government, diplomacy, and strategy from Reichman University in Israel, and a bachelor’s in international relations from the Hebrew University. 

Milgrim worked at the embassy’s public diplomacy department, The Times of Israel reports. She earned her master’s degree in international studies from American University in D.C. She also earned a master’s in natural resources and sustainable development from the United Nations University of Peace. 

Additional information was added to this piece after publication.

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