Israeli Embassy Staffers Killed In DC Shooting Were About To Get Engaged

WASHINGTON, DC — Two staff members of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C. were planning to get engaged before a gunman shot and killed them outside the Capital Jewish Museum on Wednesday night, their family said publicly.

Officials said Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim were gunned down as they left an event at the museum in what both President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called an act of antisemitism.

The suspect, identified as Elias Rodriguez, 31, of Chicago, was taken into custody shortly after the shooting, authorities said.

My heart breaks for Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky, who were murdered last night at the Capital Jewish Museum. Antisemitic 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… pic.twitter.com/IojnTD7JHN
— JD Vance (@JDVance) May 22, 2025

In an interview with The New York Times, Milgrim's parents said their daughter planned to travel to Jerusalem with Lischinsky to meet his family for the first time. What they didn’t know, they told the Times, is that he had bought an engagement ring before the trip.

When Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Yechiel Leiter, called the Milgrims to tell them about the shooting, he also revealed that Lischinsky had bought the ring this week and planned to propose on their trip.

“The ironic part is that we were worried for our daughter’s safety in Israel,” Robert Milgrim told the Times. “But she was murdered three days before going.”

Lischinsky, an Israeli citizen, worked as a research assistant at the Israeli Embassy, where he was responsible for several tasks, including keeping its political department up to date on “important events and trends happening in the Middle East & North Africa,” according to his LinkedIn profile.

Lischinsky moved to Israel from Germany at age 16, according to his profile, and he said that he had “the privilege of calling both Jerusalem and Nuremberg my home.”

This week @IsraelinUSA marked Israel's 77th Independence Day, a day filled with deep personal and national meaning.

On Independence Day, we celebrate the miracle of the Jewish people returning to their ancestral homeland after 2000 years. pic.twitter.com/O8BE8J40IT
— Yarón Lischinsky (@yaron_li) May 10, 2025

The German-Israeli Society told Reuters that Lischinsky had grown up in Bavaria and spoke fluent German.

"We remember him as an open-minded, intelligent and deeply committed person whose interest in German-Israeli relations and ways to achieve peaceful coexistence in the Middle East brightened the environment around him," said the society's president, Volker Beck.

The organization also said Lischinsky was a founding member of the youth forum of the Israeli-German Society, the group’s counterpart in Israel, and took a job at the Israeli Embassy in Washington in 2022. It said that he was also a passionate photographer.

Ron Prosor, a veteran Israeli diplomat, said that Lischinsky was a student of his at an Israeli university. He said that Lischinsky was Christian, “a true lover of Israel” who had served in the military "and chose to dedicate his life to the state of Israel.”

Milgrim worked at the Israeli Embassy’s department of public diplomacy and organized visits and missions to Israel. She was an American citizen, according to Israel's former ambassador to the U.S., Mike Herzog.

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In her LinkedIn bio, she said that her passion “lies at the intersection of peacebuilding, religious engagement, and environmental work.”

She said that as a Jewish educator, she facilitated “insightful discussions on geopolitics in Israel and Palestine.” She said that she worked in Tel Aviv for Tech2Peace, an organization that provides “high-tech and entrepreneurial training alongside conflict dialogue to young Palestinians and Israelis.”

She had a certificate in religious engagement and peacebuilding from the United States Institute of Peace, an organization funded by the U.S. Congress that promotes conflict resolution.

She graduated from the University of Kansas in 2021 with a bachelor's degree in environmental studies with a minor in anthropology and also had a master's degree in international affairs from American University.

Tech2Peace told Reuters that Milgrim was an active volunteer who "brought people together with empathy and purpose."

"Her dedication to building a better future was evident in everything she did," it said. "Her voice and spirit will be profoundly missed."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.