A large portion of the authorities’ investigation into murder suspect Elias Rodriguez, who has been accused of killing Washington, DC Israeli Embassy employees Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim, has been focused on his home city of Chicago.
Per CBS News Chicago, federal agents arrived at Rodriguez’s Albany Park apartment early Thursday morning, not long after Rodriguez was taken into custody in DC. Agents left the apartment that afternoon with boxes, luggage, and backpacks. A Hyundai Accent registered to Rodriguez was towed away.
People who knew Rodriguez were interviewed by investigators, and told them that Rodriguez had been outraged by the 2023 killing of Wadee Alfayoumi, a 6-year-old in the Chicago suburb of Plainfield who was Muslim and Palestinian. The family’s landlord was convicted of murder and hate crime charges.
In the window of Rodriguez’s Chicago residence, he had a photo of Alfayoumi. People who knew Rodriguez described to investigators how he felt a need to get vengeance for the young boy’s death. CBS News reported, "His apparent desire for revenge heightened with the Israel-Hamas war over the plight of the Palestinians."
Rodriguez attended the University of Illinois at Chicago and graduated in 2018 with a bachelor’s degree in English. During his time at the school, mass protests broke out in the city in response to the Great March of Return protests on the Gaza side of the Israeli border, in which Palestinians sought to go into Israel and stake a claim to land. It began on March 30, 2018. It is unclear whether then-university student Rodriguez attended these protests.
Solidarity protests broke out in Chicago in response to the Gaza protests, as well as Trump’s moving of the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. One such protest took place in May 2018, chanting "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free," and carrying Palestinian flags, the Chicago Sun-Times reported at the time.
Another was hosted by Students for Justice in Palestine at the University of Chicago less than a month later, with the group stating at the time, "Join us - the 51st Anniversary of the Occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and Jerusalem - to make sure Ron Dermer can deliver a clear message to Netanyahu: the movement for Palestinian rights and Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions is growing in Chicago and throughout the US." Dermer was serving as Israeli Ambassador to the US at the time.
Rodriguez has been charged with murder of foreign officials, causing the death of a person through the use of a firearm, discharge of a firearm during a crime of violence, as well as two counts of first-degree murder. Court documents stated that Rodriguez was seen "advancing closer to the decedents, leaning over with them with his arm extended, and firing several more times. As Decedent-1 (Milgrim) attempted to crawl away from Rodriguez, he followed behind her and fired again."
