They Gathered to Turn ‘Pain into Purpose.' Then Gunfire Shattered Their Peace.

Tom Brenner/For The Washington Post
A bystander prays while wearing an Israel flag with a cross in the middle, near the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington on May 21.
They had gathered in a D.C. museum lobby to hear stories of hope and action.
A young aid worker with the Multifaith Alliance, perched beside a vase of white flowers, spoke about efforts to save lives in war-ravaged Gaza. Her group, founded by the daughter of Holocaust survivors, is run by a Syrian refugee, and their success has hinged on building trust in terrible situations.
'As you leave here this evening, please continue to think about tonight's conversation,' said one of the hosts, Sue Stolov, as the program in the Capital Jewish Museum wound down. 'Share what you learned here with friends and colleagues so the impact will ripple like water outward to others.'
Then, as some in the crowd began to depart the Wednesday night reception, a man in a hooded coat, who had been lingering outside, trying to light a cigarette in the rain, followed them and pointed a 9mm semiautomatic.
He squeezed the trigger – again and again. Then, in the chaos, he went into the museum.
'I did it for Gaza!' witnesses would recall him saying later. 'Free, free Palestine!'
The suspected gunman, authorities said, was 31-year-old Elias Rodriguez, a medical clerical worker from Chicago who had traveled to Washington for job-related meetings and is now charged with two counts of first-degree murder and murdering foreign officials. Investigators said they are exploring a possible link between him and social media posts accusing Israel of genocide.
The couple killed, Yaron Lischinsky, 30, and Sarah Lynn Milgrim, 26, both employees of the Israeli Embassy who had attended the Young Diplomats Reception at the museum, were planning to move in together in July, friends said. They said Lischinsky, who had purchased an engagement ring, intended to propose to Milgrim on a forthcoming trip to Jerusalem.
As the lights of emergency vehicles strobed red and blue through the windows of the building, many who remained in the museum were unaware of the horror outside. There was still the glow of possibility after an inspiring night.
Even when Rodriguez, in a blue blazer, with his trimmed beard and sneakers, rushed breathlessly into the lobby after the killings and settled on a bench, his presence wasn't immediately alarming. He looked like a 'normal person that you walk by on the street,' one woman would say later, though he also began muttering for someone to call the police.
This account of Wednesday's tragedy – how an evening suffused with aspirations for peace suddenly dissolved, in the span of a muzzle flash, into unspeakable violence that echoed around the globe – is based on numerous interviews, statements by police and government officials, and publicly available court records.
It left JoJo Drake Kalin, one of the organizers of the reception, freighted with grief as she told a reporter the following day:
'It's not lost on me the deep irony that such hatred and depravity happened on a night when we were standing in the utter opposite of that.
Gathering in the spirit of peace
The day before the shooting, Rodriguez, who was once affiliated with the far-left Party for Socialism and Liberation, had left his apartment on a leafy block of century-old courtyard buildings and classic Chicago two-flats in the East Albany Park neighborhood of the Northwest Side.
Authorities said he was headed to Washington for meetings related to his job, verifying physicians' information for the American Osteopathic Information Association, which had two professional events scheduled for Wednesday in the nation's capital.
He checked in for his United Airlines flight at Chicago O'Hare International Airport, and authorities said his gun was in his luggage in the cargo hold.
The same day, with Rodriguez arriving at Reagan National Airport, Milgrim and Lischinsky submitted their application for an apartment near the Israeli Embassy in Northwest Washington, where they first met. Lischinsky, an Israeli citizen, was a research assistant in the political department and Milgrim, who grew up near Kansas City, Kansas, organized missions and visits to Israel.
He was an aspiring diplomat, multilingual and quietly intellectual, an amateur photographer and soccer player; she was an environmentalist, a dog lover, a violinist, a former child vocalist in the chorus of the Lyric Opera of Kansas City.
With Milgrim's old goldendoodle, Andy, the couple was on the cusp of a life together.
An act of grievous self-harm outside the embassy last year had captivated Rodriguez's imagination, authorities said. Aaron Bushnell, who was on active duty with the U.S. Air Force, doused his clothing with a flammable liquid and fatally set himself ablaze, shouting, 'Free Palestine!'
Bushnell had declared in a video that he did not want to be 'complicit in genocide' – and Rodriguez, after his arrest, would tell police that the self-immolation had been courageous, that Bushnell was a martyr, according to court documents in Rodriguez's case.
On Wednesday, about three hours before the Young Diplomats Reception was set to begin, authorities said, Rodriguez got a ticket to the event. It remains unclear how he learned of it.
The gathering, hosted by the young professionals division of the American Jewish Committee, was the sort of get-together that Lischinsky and Milgrim, described by friends as warm and outgoing, routinely attended.
The committee is a nonprofit organization that works to counter antisemitism and promote peace and security for Israel. The theme of the reception was 'turning pain into purpose,' and a panel discussion would include IsraAID, a nongovernmental humanitarian group headquartered in Tel Aviv, as well as the Multifaith Alliance.
As a security measure, organizers didn't advertise the location. 'Shared upon registration' was all they said. At the request of organizers, four guards were armed at the museum, rather than one as usual.
About an hour and a half before the reception, Milgrim was walking along a street, chatting by phone with Joshua Maxey, executive director of Bet Mishpachah, an LGBTQ+ synagogue in Washington. The two were finalizing plans for an evening of prayer and dinner scheduled for next month to celebrate LGBTQ+ Jews during the city's WorldPride celebration, Maxey said.
Milgrim told Maxey that she didn't want to leave any work for him or her colleagues before she departed with Lischinsky for Jerusalem – for the trip on which Lischinsky meant to propose marriage.
It was just past 5 p.m. when Maxey and Milgrim said goodbye. He remembered telling her, 'I hope I get to see your smiling face on Friday,' before her flight to Jerusalem
'I did it for Gaza'
The Capital Jewish Museum is a glass-and-brick symbol of resilience.
A historic synagogue that is integrated into the modern museum complex was lifted up and moved from the city's Chinatown neighborhood in the 1960s, then relocated twice more in the decades afterward. The U.S. Capitol is within sight of the museum's terrace.
Diplomats from 30 countries had signed up to attend the reception, and when Wednesday evening arrived, congressional staffers and emissaries from Japan, Australia, Bahrain and other nations milled about the atrium lobby, ordering from an open bar and savoring smoked eggplant, Israeli pearled couscous and za'atar salmon.
Ran Goldstein, representing IsraAID, said his group serves as an intermediary in Gaza, trying 'to understand both sides while working according to humanitarian principles.' Milgrim and Lischinsky approached him afterward, chatting about colleagues they had in common.
As the reception neared its end, one of the organizers gave Milgrim a hug, and they promised they'd get coffee soon.
Then JoJo Kalin rode in an elevator to an upper floor, accompanying a friend to a museum exhibit on Washington's vibrant gay Jewish scene, which includes a 'Mr. Nice Jewish Boy D.C. 2019' sash from a local pageant and Jewish drag queen Ester Goldberg's sparkling purple dress.
Outside, Milgrim and Lischinsky stood on a corner, waiting to cross a street, an FBI agent wrote in an affidavit filed in court. In the damp night, Rodriguez walked past them, then turned and looked at them from behind, according to the agent, Christina Hagenbaugh.
He can be seen on surveillance video taking a shooter's stance, arms extended toward the young couple, before he opened fire, Hagenbaugh wrote.
After the two collapsed to the pavement, Rodriguez moved closer, the affidavit says. It says he leaned over them and pulled the trigger again. As Milgrim tried to crawl away, Rodriguez followed her and continued shooting, stopping only to reload, according to the agent. When Milgrim sat up, the affidavit says, he fired yet again, repeatedly.
Evidence technicians would count 21 spent shells on the ground.
Video shows Rodriguez then jogging toward the museum entrance, and a witness saw him toss away the pistol, according to court documents.
Guests inside heard the crack of the shots, and there was some concern but no hysteria, attendees said. Some dismissed the sound, ascribing it to an obscure disturbance in the city, unconnected to them, while others moved elsewhere in the building for safety.
Entering the museum, Rodriguez plopped down on a bench, said Paige Siegel, an attendee. He had been let in with others who had stepped outside, the lawyer said. She said Rodriguez kept talking about calling the police.
Kalin was headed down from the museum exhibit, and, when the elevator doors opened, friends told her there had been gunshots. And she saw Rodriguez on the bench, disheveled and pale. Kalin assumed that he had been caught in the commotion outside, and she felt obligated as an organizer to care for a man who seemed unwell.
'I'm so sorry this happened,' she told him. 'Are you okay?'
She approached a bartender, who was starting to pack up, and returned with a cup of ice water. As she passed it to Rodriguez, she said, their hands brushed, and she could feel his sweat.
Meanwhile, as organizers guided guests to a far side of the lobby, away from the windows and glass doors, Kalin's husband, Yoni River Kalin, pushed his way back toward the entrance, where he saw Rodriguez, now standing up in his blue blazer, his white shirt untucked. 'He said, 'I'm unarmed,'' Yoni Kalin recalled.
'And then he said, 'I did it.' And then he said, 'I did it for Gaza.''
And he began chanting what sounded to Kalin like a mantra.
'Free, free Palestine!' Kalin recalled him saying. 'Intifada, revolution, there is only one solution.'
Rodriguez dropped his red and white cloth kaffiyeh, the headscarf seen as a symbol of Palestinian resistance. Kalin bent to pick it up and tried handing it back as an officer grabbed Rodriguez. 'This event was focused on humanity,' Yoni Kalin said. 'I wanted to show him respect as a human.'
'Free, free Palestine!' Rodriguez shouted as he was led away.
'From Hamas!' Yoni Kalin retorted.
In the moment, the Kalins and others thought Rodriguez was merely another disruptive protester. They still didn't know that anyone had been killed.
While Rodriguez was in custody, authorities said, a post appeared on the social media platform X bearing the name 'Elias Rodriguez,' accusing Israel of 'genocide' and declaring that 'a perpetrator' might be a good person sometimes 'and yet be a monster all the same.' It was titled, 'Escalate for Gaza, Bring the War Home.'
At the museum, some guests were taken upstairs to be interviewed; others lined up to talk with police outside the gift shop. Getting texts while they waited, the depth of the tragedy started to become clear.
As detectives questioned them, a woman in yellow heels pressed her face into her hands.
Soon, countless people the world over would feel her grief.
'I don't want their deaths to be in vain, and I don't want this to just further alienate us,' JoJo Kalin said the next day.
'If people who experienced and witnessed this hate crime can walk away with their humanity still intact and still feel undeterred,' she said, 'I hope that inspires others to not lose sight of their humanity.'

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