A Chicago man who railed on social media against the ongoing bombing of Gaza fatally shot two Israeli Embassy employees near the Jewish museum in Washington on Wednesday before allegedly admitting to a police officer he “did it for Palestine,” according to federal charges unsealed Thursday afternoon.

Elias Rodriguez, 31, of the 4700 block of North Troy Street, is charged in U.S. District Court in Washingoton with first-degree murder, murder of a foreign official, causing a death with a firearm and discharging a firearm in a crime of violence, according to the six-page criminal complaint.

Rodriguez is a graduate of the University of Illinois Chicago and most recently worked as an administrative assistant for a Chicago-based health care company. FBI agents could be seen moving in and out of his apartment for much of the day Thursday with his street cordoned off.

Arrested at the scene in Washington, he appeared before a federal magistrate judge there Thursday afternoon, where he waived his right to a detention hearing, interim U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro said at a news conference. The judge informed Rodriguez the charges could bring the death penalty if convicted, Pirro said. A preliminary hearing was set for June 19.

Officials said the investigation was still in its beginning stages in Washington and Chicago. The case was being pursued as “a hate crime and a crime of terrorism, and we will add additional charges as the evidence warrants,” Pirro said.

“This was an act of cowardice,” she said. “It is not an act of a hero.”

According to the complaint, Rodriguez boarded a flight for Washington at O’Hare International Airport on Tuesday with a 9 mm handgun packed in his luggage and declared at departure. Shortly after 9 p.m. Wednesday, Rodriguez shot two staff members of the Israeli Embassy in Washington as the victims were leaving an event at the Capital Jewish Museum, the complaint stated.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar identified the victims as Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim. Lischinsky was a research assistant, and Milgrim organized visits and missions to Israel.

Rodriguez was observed pacing outside the museum before the shooting, and afterward approached a group of four people and opened fire from behind, the charges alleged. Rodriguez followed behind Milgrim as she tried to crawl away and fired several more times into her body, the charges alleged.

One witness from the scene told police they were sitting in a car before the shooting and saw a man later identified as Rodriguez wearing a blue hooded raincoat and a backpack, attempting to light a cigarette in the rain. The witness, who found Rodriguez’s behavior to be “strange,” then saw four people walking out of the Jewish Museum and heard gunshots. The witness ducked, and when they looked back up they saw Rodriguez “motioning as if he was attempting to shoot the firearm, but it was not firing,” according to the complaint.

Surveillance footage also captured the shooting, including muzzle flashes as Rodriguez fired and a break as he appeared to reload the weapon, according to the complaint. Rodriguez was then captured “jogging back in the direction … of where the entrance to the museum is located,” according to the complaint.

The complaint alleged that when police arrived, Rodriguez asked to speak with one of the officers. “Rodriguez then stated that he ‘did it’ and that he was unarmed,” the charges alleged. Later, Rodriguez “spontaneously stated on scene to (police) ‘I did it for Palestine, I did it for Gaza, I am unarmed,” the complaint alleged.

As he was being led away, Rodriguez began chanting, “Free, free Palestine,” officials said.

Investigators recovered a 9 mm handgun at the scene, as well as 21 expended cartridge casings and a firearm magazine, the complaint stated. The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives traced the handgun and determined Rodriguez had purchased it March 6, 2020, in Illinois, according to the charges.

Steven Jensen, assistant director in charge for the FBI field office in Washington, told reporters at the news conference that Rodriguez was believed to have traveled to the nation’s capitol for a work-related conference. He said agents were still trying to fill in gaps of his movements from when he landed in Washington on Tuesday and the attack Wednesday night.

Rodriguez told authorities he’d purchased a ticket to the museum event about three hours before it started, the complaint stated.

Jensen said agents were in the process of contacting Rodriguez’s associates, family members and co-workers, as well as executing search warrants on his electronic devices in order to paint a fuller picture of his alleged motives.

Rodriguez was born and raised in Chicago and is the son of an Iraq War veteran and labor activist who works at a local veterans affairs hospital, public records show.

On Thursday morning, police had blocked the street outside Rodriguez’s apartment building in the Albany Park neighborhood on the Northwest Side, where a stream of heavily armed FBI agents were seen coming in and out of the brick, U-shaped apartment building. One apartment had a sign in the window reading “Justice for Wadea,” a reference to the killing of 6-year-old Wadea Al-Fayoume by his family’s landlord in the suburbs in 2023.

Neighbors on the block were startled to open their doors to the sight of federal agents clogging the street. “That’s terrifying,” one woman said when told why they were outside her home.

John Wayne Fry, who lives next door to the suspected shooter, a man he said lived in the apartment with a woman. He doesn’t know the relationship between the suspect and woman.

“They were very friendly. You would never expect something like this. I mean, my goodness, they had Hello Kitty on their front door," said Fry, 71. “I think you’re dealing with a young person who is sensitive. I don’t think we’re dealing with somebody who you would normally expect to be violent. You have to ask yourself what would cause a decent human being to do something crazy like this. What causes this? Because it shocked me.”

Fry said that he heard the suspect was from Chicago but never thought it would be his next-door neighbor. He was asked if they ever talked politics, and he said no.

“Today, I regret I never had a conversation with him,” he said.

After hours on the scene, FBI agents packed up their equipment and left the suspect’s apartment about 1:45 p.m. They also towed away Rodriguez’s gold 2018 Hyundai Accent with Illinois plates.

The investigation is being run by federal authorities in Washington, with significant assistance from the FBI Chicago field office and other Chicago-based federal agencies. The FBI’s Washington field office put out a statement Thursday morning that “FBI Chicago is conducting court-authorized law enforcement activity in the Chicago area in relation to yesterday’s tragic shooting in Washington D.C.”

In a social media account attributed to the suspect, a lengthy manifesto was posted at 9 p.m. Wednesday titled “Escalate for Gaza. Bring the War Home,” which decried the killings of tens of thousands in Gaza, lamented how civil protests had failed to stop it, and debated the morality of “armed demonstration.”

The post ended with what appeared to be a reference to an “action” about to be taken. “I am glad today at least there are many Americans for which the action will be highly legible and, in some funny way, the only sane thing to do,” the post stated.

Jensen, the FBI official, said Thursday he was “aware” of the postings but the FBI was still trying to verify the author.

Rodriguez was also once linked to the Party for Socialism and Liberation — a far-left group that regularly posts anti-Israel rhetoric on social media. “End the genocide. Israel out of Gaza now,” the group posted Wednesday — just hours before the D.C. shooting.

“We reject any attempt to associate the PSL with the DC shooting. Elias Rodriguez is not a member of the PSL,” the group said in an X post early Thursday.

In an online bio for the site “The History Makers,” Rodriguez stated he was “born and raised in Chicago” and graduated from UIC with a major in English. He’d worked as an oral history researcher since 2023, cultivating biographies of accomplished leaders in the African American community,” the bio stated. He said he enjoys “reading, writing, fiction, live music, film and exploring new places.”

The bio was removed from the site Thursday morning. A UIC spokesman later confirmed Rodriguez graduated from the university in 2018 with a bachelor’s degree in English.

Most recently, Rodriguez had worked as an administrative assistant for the American Osteopathic Information Association, the organization confirmed Thursday. In a statement, leaders of the organization’s sister group, the American Osteopathic Organization, offered their condolences to the victims’ families and said they were “shocked and saddened to learn that an AOIA employee has been arrested as a suspect in this horrific crime.”

The association and its sister organization would cooperate with law enforcement investigators in any way it could, the statement continued.

At an unrelated news conference Thursday, Chicago police Superintendent Larry Snelling was asked whether Rodriguez was known to police.

“What we know right now is that he doesn’t have a criminal background, but I won’t get too much into it because this is still an ongoing investigation with the FBI so we’ll keep it at that,” Snelling said.

Snelling said the department had already “put special attentions” at places of worship, is monitoring social media and is in “constant contact” with Jewish leaders.

Public records show Rodriguez’s father is a 54-year-old disabled veteran and carpenter at a Hines VA Hospital in the west suburbs, where he’s an activist in the Service Employees International Union. In March, he was part of a group of SEIU members that traveled to Washington for President Donald Trump’s address to Congress, where they protested the president’s cuts to veterans affairs and pushed their message for stronger unions and fair wages, according to the union’s Facebook account.

A man who answered the phone listed for Rodriguez’s father on Thursday hung up on a reporter.

On Thursday morning, Gov. JB Pritzker said in a statement he was “horrified” to hear of the shooting and disclosed that a member of his staff was attending the event.

“While they are shaken up, they are thankfully safe,” the governor said. “Law enforcement has apprehended the suspected gunman, and although the investigation continues, make no mistake: this was an attack on the Jewish community.”

Pritzker, who is Jewish, has pledged Illinois’ support for Israel while also seeking to distinguish Hamas militants from the Palestinian people, who he has said want peace in the region. But as someone who led the building of the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center in Skokie, Pritzker expressed how the shooting resonated with him and what trauma it has caused.

“Young Jewish people and diplomats came together in a museum built to honor their shared history but then had to flee gun shots and witness the killing of a young couple,” Pritzker said. “Whether it’s gun violence or the rising tide of antisemitism, Americans of all backgrounds have an urgent obligation to stand for peace and reject bigotry in all its forms and in every way possible.”

Reaction to the shooting continued to pour in from elected officials Thursday.

At an unrelated news conference on summer safety in Chicago, Mayor Brandon Johnson extended his “deepest condolences” to the families of those killed and to “the Jewish community as a whole,” condemning “all of these acts of antisemitic brutality.”

“We are not a better, stronger, safer city if our Jewish community is continuously under attack. We condemn these acts of terror and the anti-semitic sentiment that unfortunately has continued to spread throughout our city and around this country,” the mayor said.

Lonnie Nasatir, president of the Jewish United Fund, said he was “horrified, sad, but unfortunately not so surprised” that “two beautiful young people” lost their lives in a senseless act of violence. He said he’s also saddened that a Chicago resident could become so “infected with hate” so as to allegedly carry out the shooting.

“We have been screaming from the hilltop … that what we’re seeing on our streets of Chicago, on our campuses in Chicago, is not innocuous rallying cries. These are rallying cries of hate. These are rallying cries to incite violence against Jews and Israel,” Nasatir said. “And unfortunately, we saw somebody that took those words and those mantras into serious and violent action last night.”

Nasatir said all community leaders, including politicians, university officials and business professionals, must call out antisemitic words and actions.

“People of goodwill throughout our community need to stand up and say, ‘no, you can’t normalize antisemitism,’” Nasatir said. “It’s so acute right now, and it’s so in our face, and it’s now leading to the loss of life that our leaders need to step up and say, ‘we will not allow this in our buildings, in our streets.’”

50th Ward Ald. Debra Silverstein, the only Jewish member of the City Council, said she was “deeply concerned to learn that the attacker came from Chicago.”

She said she spoke with Snelling and local police commanders, who told her there is “no known threat to our local Jewish community.”

“However, out of an abundance of caution, the 24th District is increasing patrols and putting extra attention on our community,” Silverstein wrote. “I ask for law enforcement to investigate any ties to local extremist groups and to act swiftly to make sure the Jewish community in Chicago is kept safe.”

U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, said it was “absolutely devastating” to hear of the shooting. His colleague, Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., called the shooting “absolutely horrifying.”

“My heart goes out to the victims, their families and loved ones and the entire Jewish community in the wake of this inexcusable act of antisemitic violence,” Duckworth said. “Hate should never find safe harbor in America, and we should all be united in the fight against antisemitism.”

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(Chicago Tribune’s Madeline Buckley, A.D. Quig, Rebecca Johnson, Jeremy Gorner, and Deanese Williams-Harris contributed.)

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