Who is Elias Rodriguez? Israel embassy staff shooting suspect

WASHINGTON: A Chicago-born man, Elias Rodriguez, arrested as the lone suspect in the fatal shooting of two Israeli embassy employees in Washington was charged in federal court with two counts of first-degree murder in a killing widely condemned as an act of antisemitism.

Elias Rodriguez, 31, is accused of opening fire on a group of people on Wednesday night as they left an event for young professionals and diplomats hosted by the American Jewish Committee, an advocacy group that fights antisemitism and supports Israel.

SUSPECT’S BACKGROUND

Rodriguez was once involved with a far-left group in Chicago, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, according to a post from the group on X. The group said Rodriguez had a brief association with a PSL branch that ended in 2017 and was unaware of any further contact with him in more than seven years.

“We have nothing to do with this shooting and do not support it,” the organization said.

Rodriguez was also identified in a 2018 local news report as a member of the Chicago branch of a national group called ANSWER, an acronym for Act Now to Stop War and End Racism, which has organized demonstrations in solidarity with Palestinians. ANSWER did not immediately respond to email and phone messages.

At the time of his arrest, Rodriguez worked at the healthcare nonprofit American Osteopathic Information Association, the organization confirmed in a statement expressing sympathy for the victims.

He had also worked as an oral history researcher at The HistoryMakers, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving African American stories, according to a now-deleted biography on the group’s website, and was a content writer for technology firms.

Rodriguez was born and reared in Chicago and graduated from the University of Illinois Chicago in 2018 with a bachelor’s degree in English.

POSSIBLE MANIFESTO?

FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino posted on social media that investigators were “aware of certain writings allegedly authored by the suspect” and hoped to soon have updates regarding their authenticity.

Bongino’s statement appeared to refer to a manifesto signed with Rodriguez’s name that was posted to an anonymous X account on Wednesday night shortly before the shooting.

Posted with the title “Escalate For Gaza, Bring The War Home,” it condemned Israel’s killing of tens of thousands of Palestinians since the October 2023 Hamas attacks, and discussed the morality of “armed” action.

“In the wake of an act people look for a text to fix its meaning so here’s an attempt,” the document read. “The atrocities committed by Israelis against Palestine defy description and defy quantification.”