A socialist political party linked to the suspect in the fatal shooting of two Israeli embassy staff members in Washington, D.C., denied that he's a member.
Police arrested 31-year-old Elias Rodriguez after Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim were shot and killed Wednesday evening while leaving an event at a Jewish museum.
Police said the suspect yelled, "Free, free Palestine" after he was arrested.
"We reject any attempt to associate the PSL with the DC shooting. Elias Rodriguez is not a member of the PSL. He had a brief association with one branch of the PSL that ended in 2017. We know of no contact with him in over 7 years. We have nothing to do with this shooting and do not support it," Party for Socialism and Liberation posted Thursday morning on X.
Rodriguez was quoted on the PSL website in an old post about a protest the group attended at then-Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel's house over the police shooting of Laquan McDonald and the city's bid for Amazon's headquarters, Newsweek reported.
Rodriguez was named as being "from the Party for Socialism and Liberation" in a story from October 2017 titled "Chicago Demands Justice for Laquan, Not Money for Amazon." The post with the story no longer appears on PSL's website.
"The wealth that Amazon has brought to Seattle has not been shared with its Black residents. [Amazon's] whitening of Seattle is structurally racist and a direct danger to all workers who live in that city," Rodriguez was quoted as saying, Newsweek reported.
"So do we in Chicago and all across the country want a nation of cities dominated and occupied by massive corporations where only the rich and white can live and the vast majority of us must live on edges of the city and society living in deeper and deeper poverty? I don't think so."
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar identified the shooting victims as Lischinsky, a research assistant, and Milgrim, who organized visits and missions to Israel.
They were leaving an event at the Capital Jewish Museum when the suspect approached a group of four people and opened fire, Metropolitan Police Chief Pamela A. Smith said at a news conference.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
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