US federal prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for the man who shot and killed two Israeli Embassy staffers outside Washington’s Capital Jewish Museum in May 2025, the DC US attorney’s office announced on Friday.
According to the notice of intent filed by the attorney’s office, Elias Rodriguez, the suspect, intentionally killed victims Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky, and/or intentionally engaged in violence knowing it carried a risk of death. These – the filing says – meet the statutory threshold for what a jury or court must prove beyond a reasonable doubt for a defendant to be eligible for the federal death penalty.
The notice of intent also lists various aggravating factors that help justify the death penalty as the appropriate punishment. These include grave risk of death to additional persons, substantial planning and premeditation to cause death or commit an act of terrorism, and vulnerability of the victim (Milgrim is said to have been vulnerable due to infirmity).
The federal prosecutors also detail non-statutory aggravating factors, such as a bias motive. The prosecutors declare that Rodriguez’s actions were motivated by political, ideological, national, and religious bias, contempt, and hatred.
“He targeted individuals whom he perceived to have attended an event for young Jewish professionals, organized by the American Jewish Committee and hosted at the Capital Jewish Museum, to amplify the effect of his crimes,” the filing says.
In technical terms, the prosecutors seek the death penalty for the following offenses on account of the offenses charged in Counts One, Four, and Five of the Superseding Indictment. In February 2026, Rodriguez was indicted on 13 counts. The prosecutors are saying that Count One (Murder of a Foreign Official) and Counts Four and Five (Discharge of a Firearm During a Crime of Violence and Causing Death Through the Use of a Firearm) are the charges for which the death penalty can be given.
The Superseding Indictment also takes into account Rodriguez’s long history of anti-Israel statements, including a social media message saying “please god vaporize every Israel 18 and above” and other similar posts. After shooting dead Lischinsky and Milgrim, Rodriguez yelled “Free Palestine” and then “I did it for Gaza.”
Lischinsky's family said they'd forgive shooter
C., a friend of Lischinsky, told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday that he didn’t think that “Yaron or his family of Messianic Jews would approve of it.”
“Even at the funeral, [his family] said that they’d forgive [Rodriguez] or send love.”
C. told the Post that while Rodriguez “of course deserves the death penalty,” he is personally against it in this case.
“You’re just going to make a martyr out of [Rodriguez],” C. told the Post. “Instead of being forgotten about and rotting in prison for the rest of his days, he’s going to become the next Luigi Mangione for the far Left. And this martyrization would just, I think, lead to more attacks or at least glorify them.” [Luigi Mangione is a 27-year-old American man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Despite the crime, many individuals venerated Mangione as a type of anti-capitalist hero.]
Friend of Lischinsky: Yaron likely would've forgiven him
Another former friend of Lischinsky, Batya Brownstein, told the Post that Lischinsky “probably would have made a distinction between earthly justice and heavenly justice.”
She concurred with C. that “Yaron probably would have actually forgiven the man who killed him, as per his brother’s eulogy.”
However, she said she is “glad to see justice done on earth for political reasons and to deter future attacks, but justice will be done in heaven too.”
Tzvi Jasper contributed to this report.