Nancy Milgrim faced every mother’s worst nightmare after her husband received news alerts on his phone about a shooting in Washington D.C.
Like every parent, her first thought was for her daughter.
The attack happened outside an event for young diplomats at the American Jewish Committee. The Milgrims’ daughter, Sarah, 26, was a fellow, and they knew there was a good chance she would be attending.
Robert Milgrim called for information from the police and the FBI, but it was too early for them to offer any details, he said in an interview with The New York Times.
There would have been many people in the area. They hoped nobody was hurt. Most of all, they hoped their daughter was okay.
It was natural for a parent to worry, but you don’t really think the worst is going to happen to you.
Then Mrs Milgrim felt a terrible dread when she opened a family locator app on her phone. It was a way of keeping tabs on everyone, a reassurance.
But the app showed that Sarah’s location was the exact place where the shooting had happened. The Capital Jewish Museum.
“I pretty much already knew. I was hoping to be wrong,” Mrs Milgrim told the Times.
Minutes later, her very worst fears were confirmed. Israel’s Ambassador to the United States Yechiel Leiter told the shocked parents that Sarah and her boyfriend, Yaron Lischinsky, 30, were the couple killed in cold blood by a vengeful gunman.
The tragic couple met 18 months ago at the Israeli Embassy where they both worked, he as a researcher and she to organize delegates’ visits to Israel and missions. Sarah was raised in Prairie Village, Kansas, and her boyfriend was born in Israel but lived for a time in Germany.
“He was very much like Sarah: passionate, extremely intelligent, dedicated to what he does, always on the cause of what’s right,” Mr Milgrim told the Times, adding that they learned after Wednesday night’s tragedy that Lischinsky had bought an engagement ring and was planning to propose on an upcoming trip to Jerusalem to visit his parents.
They had been scheduled to fly to Israel on Sunday.
“What went through my mind is, I feel the antisemitism that has surfaced since Oct. 7 and also since the election of President Trump. It’s just an extension of my worst fears,” Sarah’s father told the Times. “The ironic part is that we were worried for our daughter’s safety in Israel. But she was murdered three days before going.”
He added that the young couple, who held master’s degrees, were concerned about the situation in the Middle East and cared about both the stability of Israel and the plight of Palestinians.
The gunman, named as Elias Rodriguez, 30, from Chicago, was taken into custody after the 9 p.m. attack. He was reportedly shouting pro-Palestinian slogans before his arrest.
“Early indicators are that this is an act of targeted violence,” Dan Bongino, deputy director of the FBI, wrote on X.
“Yaron and Sarah were our friends and colleagues. They were in the prime of their lives,” posted the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C..
Law enforcement said that Rodriguez is in custody and that the shooting is being investigated as a hate crime.
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