DC shooting live: Jewish museum attack suspect’s ‘manifesto’ online after young diplomat couple shot dead

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar identified the victims as Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim.

They were targeted as they were leaving an event at the Capital Jewish Museum when the suspect approached a group of four people and opened fire, Metropolitan Police Chief Pamela Smith.

Lischinsky was a German-Israeli dual national employed as a research assistant for Middle East & North African Affairs at the Embassy’s Political Department, according to his LinkedIn profile.

He had purchased an engagement ring earlier this week ‘with the intention of proposing next week in Jerusalem,’ Israeli ambassador to the United States Yechiel Leiter revealed.

Milgrim worked in the public diplomacy department at the embassy. She earned a master’s degree in international studies from American University.

One of her main duties was organizing missions and visits to Israel.

Footage emerged overnight of 30-year-old Elias Rodriguez as he was taken into custody after two Israeli embassy staffers were gunned down outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington DC.

A friend of DC shooting victim Yaron Lischinsky said the Israeli embassy worker was a ‘man of conviction, of humility, of warmth, and of profound integrity’ in a heartbreaking tribute.

‘You could not have met a kinder soul. He and I used to talk in the back of our congregation on Friday evenings in Jerusalem about life, ministry, identity, our futures, our passions, our faith,’ friend David Boskey said on Facebook.

‘Yaron was going propose to his beloved fiancee, Sarah Milgrim, in Jerusalem next week. Instead, their families will be burying them in their prime.’

The family of DC shooting victim Sarah Milgrim heartbreakingly revealed they did not know she was set to get engaged until officials said she was after Wednesday’s shocking murders.

Her parents told the New York Times that Milgrim, who grew up in Prairie Village, Kansas, had met Yaron Lischinsky a year and a half ago shortly after joining the Israeli embassy.

‘He was incredible,’ Milgrim’s father Robert said, adding Lischinsky had met his girlfriend’s parents multiple times.

‘He was very much like Sarah: passionate, extremely intelligent, dedicated to what he does, always on the cause of what’s right.’

DC shooting victim Yaron Lischinsky held a German passport, Germany’s Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said Thursday morning.

He said Lischinsky was a duel German-Israeli national, and said in an address to the German Bundestag that the shooting had ‘shaken’ the legislature.

‘I think I speak for the whole House in saying that this has shaken us, that our thoughts and prayers are with the families of the murdered and the members of the Israeli foreign service,’ he said.

He described the murder as an ‘insideous’ act.

The shooting comes as Israel has launched a new campaign targeting Hamas in the Gaza Strip in a war that has set tensions aflame across the wider Middle East.

The war began with the Palestinian militant group Hamas coming out of Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023, to kill 1,200 people and take some 250 hostages back to the coastal enclave.

In the time since, Israel’s devastating campaign in Gaza has killed more than 53,000 people, mostly women and children, according to local health authorities, whose count doesn’t differentiate between combatants and civilians.

The fighting has displaced 90% of the territory’s roughly 2 million population, sparked a hunger crisis and obliterated vast swaths of Gaza’s urban landscape. Aid groups ran out of food to distribute weeks ago, and most of the population of around 2.3 million relies on communal kitchens whose supplies are nearly depleted.

The attack was seen by officials in Israel and the U.S. as the latest in a growing wave of antisemitism as Israel ramps up its offensive in the Gaza Strip, and as food security experts have warned that Gaza risks falling into famine unless Israel’s blockade ends.

Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter said the man had purchased a ring this week with the intent to propose next week in Jerusalem.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that ‘wild incitement against the State of Israel’ was to blame for the horror attack and that it was the ‘terrible price of anti-Semitism.’

Netanyahu has also announced increased security measures at Israeli diplomatic missions worldwide in order to protect state representatives.

‘These horrible D.C. killings, based obviously on antisemitism, must end, NOW!” President Donald Trump posted on social media early Thursday.

‘Hatred and Radicalism have no place in the USA.’