CNN —
The suspect accused of killing two Israeli embassy staffers has a history of political activism, including denouncing corporate power, US military actions and police abuses, according to a CNN review of interviews and writings linked to him.
In a 2017 GoFundMe page that included his photo, a testimonial attributed to Elias Rodriguez described how, when he was 11, his father’s deployment to Iraq sparked his political awakening and mobilized him to prevent “another generation of Americans coming home from genocidal imperialist wars.”
Authorities are investigating what led to the shooting late Wednesday outside the Capital Jewish Museum, where they say Rodriguez, a 31-year-old from Chicago, pulled a gun and killed a young couple, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim. Rodriguez yelled, “Free, free Palestine,” as police detained him.
In a complaint filed in federal court on Thursday charging Rodriguez with murder and other counts, prosecutors said he told police he was inspired by a US airman who died last year after setting himself on fire outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington, DC, to draw attention to the war in Gaza, calling him a “martyr.”
Police are also investigating a letter posted to X shortly after the shootings and apparently signed by Rodriguez that advocates for violent retaliation over the war in Gaza – a message shared repeatedly on that account.
A CNN review of the account, @kyotoleather, found that it is linked to other accounts with the name and photo of Rodriguez, and includes replies where other users address him by name.
The letter posted on Wednesday expressed fury over the “atrocities committed by the Israelis against Palestine” and referenced “armed action” as a valid form of protest – one that is “the only sane thing to do.”
“What more at this point can one say about the proportion of mangled and burned and exploded human beings whom were children,” said the letter. “We who let this happen will never deserve the Palestinians’ forgiveness.”
The letter was posted to X around 10 p.m. on Wednesday. It is not clear who posted it or if it was a pre-scheduled post set before the incident.
In the years before his arrest in DC this week, Rodriguez allied publicly with several leftist groups in the Chicago area.
The GoFundMe page created in August 2017 sought donations so Rodriguez could attend the People’s Congress of Resistance in DC, an anti-Trump protest event.
In a testimonial attributed to Rodriguez, he wrote he “was 11 years old when my dad, an Army National Guardsman, sat our family down to tell us that he was being sent to Iraq.”
He described being disturbed when his father returned from the deployment with “souvenirs,” including a patch ripped off an Iraqi soldier’s uniform. He wrote that he was alienated by American politics over the war.
“The Democrats will promise to protect the marginalized both here and abroad in 2018, like they did in 2006. And just like in 2006, they’ll be lying. It’s up to the people to protect themselves,” the GoFundMe testimonial said.
Rodriguez’s mother, reached by CNN, declined to comment for this story. The Army National Guard confirmed to CNN that a man identified in public records as Rodriguez’s father was a member of the Army National Guard from 2005 to 2012, and deployed to Iraq from October 2006 to September 2007.
In October 2017, Rodriguez attended a demonstration outside then-Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s house to protest a police shooting and a bid to bring Amazon’s second headquarters to the city.
“The wealth that Amazon has brought to Seattle has not been shared with its Black residents,” Rodriguez told Liberation, a publication by the Party for Socialism and Liberation, which identified him as a member at the time. He added that “[Amazon’s] whitening of Seattle is structurally racist and a direct danger to all workers who live in that city.”
The PSL on Thursday said in a statement on X that Rodriguez is no longer a member and had only “a brief association with one branch of the PSL that ended in 2017.” The group added that “we have nothing to do with this shooting and do not support it.”
In January 2018, Rodriguez marched in another protest against Amazon in downtown Chicago organized by ANSWER Chicago, an anti-war group. Rodriguez told Newsy in an on-camera interview that “if we can keep Amazon out, that is a huge victory and demonstrates sort of the power of people coming together, being able to say no to things like gentrification.”
In a statement to CNN, ANSWER Coalition said the organization does not have individual members and that they are not connected to Rodriguez in any way.
“It appears he attended ANSWER protests 7 years ago and we are not aware of any contact since then. We obviously have nothing to do with this shooting and do not support it,” ANSWER Coalition said.
FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino said in a post on X, that “the FBI is aware of certain writings allegedly authored by the suspect, and we hope to have updates as to the authenticity very soon.”
The letter bearing Rodriguez’s name describes the author’s outrage over a perceived lack of action from Western and Arab governments to stop Israel’s war in Gaza and advocates for armed action, which it compares to forms of nonviolent protest.
“An armed action is not necessarily a military action… Usually it is theater and spectacle, a quality it shares with many unarmed actions,” the letter said.
The letter said that years ago, Americans would likely have not understood a violent attack on behalf of Palestine – “such an action would have been illegible, would seem insane.” But amid increasing public pressure to end the war in Gaza, the author wrote, “there are many Americans for which the action will be highly legible and, in some funny way, the only sane thing to do.”
The letter ended with a note to the author’s parents and sibling, and is signed “Elias Rodriguez.”
The same X account where the letter was posted has previously defended violent tactics, and expressed views calling for the destruction of the state of Israel.
In response to another user’s post supporting the shooting of others and calling violence an “acceptable part of reality,” the account replied: “Agreed – violence does not have to happen, but if it does, then it should.”
“What more evidence is needed that the colony and its recalcitrants will have to be totally extirpated by the end of all this,” the account wrote about Israel in another post responding to a video compilation of Israeli government officials calling for a total siege and bombardment of the Gaza Strip.
The social media posts show videos taken in the crowd from protests in Chicago against Israel’s war in Gaza.
In Chicago, Rodriguez most recently worked as an administrative specialist with the American Osteopathic Information Association, according to a LinkedIn account with his name and photo.
“We were shocked and saddened to learn that an AOIA employee has been arrested as a suspect in this horrific crime,” the group’s president, Teresa Hubka, said in a joint statement with its CEO, Kathleen Creason.
Rodriguez lived in the Albany Park neighborhood, where a next-door neighbor told CNN he was stunned by Rodriguez’s alleged tie to the DC shooting.
John Fry, 71, said Rodriguez has lived in the apartment next to his for about the past two years with a woman, although he said he did not know what their relationship was or the woman’s name.
“They were very quiet, they were very friendly,” Fry said.
Fry said he never had any political conversations with Rodriguez.
“We never did (talk politics) and now today, I regret that I never had a conversation with him because as you can tell I’ve been around a while,” Fry said, referring to his own age.
“You don’t end war with guns and bombs,” Fry said. “You end the war by going to the people, patiently explaining, and you know a vote is much more powerful than a bullet or a bomb.”
CNN’s Majlie de Puy Kamp, Sabrina Shulman, Evan Perez, Bill Kirkos, Whitney Wild and Lauren Chadwick contributed to this report
Editor’s Note: This story was updated to included a comment from ANSWER.
