Organizer of event at Israeli Embassy said she looked ‘evil in the eyes’ after interacting with shooting suspect

The organizer of the event where two Israeli Embassy staffers were fatally shot Wednesday night in Washington, D.C., said she unknowingly “looked evil in the eyes” when she and others tried to comfort a man they initially thought was a distressed witness who was later arrested in connection with the shooting.

JoJo Drake Kalin told Sky News, NBC News’ international partner, that moments after shots rang out at the Capital Jewish Museum, a man looking distraught was allowed inside the building because the security guard thought “he was a victim, an innocent bystander to this attack. And being the well-meaning group that we are, we all thought that was the case. And I actually gave him water.”

Kalin did not know she was face-to-face with Elias Rodriguez from Chicago, who was arrested by police in connection with the shooting of Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky.

Moments later, Kalin realized she was “looking evil in the eye, that he was a murderer.”

Yoni River Kalin, her husband, said Rodriguez entered the event in a seeming state of shock.

“He was pale,” he told NBC News on Thursday. “You know, shooting two people definitely doesn’t sit well with anybody’s conscience. Unbeknownst to all of us, we didn’t realize that he was a shooter at this time, people were checking in: ‘Are you OK?’ ‘Were you shot?’ We thought he was a bystander in what we thought was larger D.C. crime.”

Sarah Marinuzzi, who attended the event, said that she remains in shock that she was “a foot away” from Rodriguez shortly after the shooting.

She said the man told people to call police, making others believe he was a witness to the shooting. “They had, at that point, shut the doors to the museum inside and outside, so folks could not leave.”

Marinuzzi said that attendees of the event spent “10 or 15 minutes” with him. Police “obviously did not assume that the killer was inside the museum at this point,” she said.

Marinuzzi said it was “haunting” to have been in contact with the man, who had “the audacity to come in and be in the same space as us for that amount of time before confessing.”

One of the attendees asked Rodriguez whether he knew where he was, she recalled. “He kind of acts oblivious at first. And then, as soon as the cop enters is when he starts yelling to the whole museum. And he yells, ‘I did it. I did it for Palestine.'”

Marinuzzi said people around him started shrieking as he reached into his backpack, pulling out a Jordanian keffiyeh.

“I started to run away at that point,” she said.

Attorney General Pam Bondi said authorities believe that Rodriguez, who was arrested Wednesday night, acted alone. He has not been charged with a crime as of Thursday morning.

The event featured Jewish and non-Jewish leaders from 30 embassies under the theme “Turning Pain Into Purpose.”

“We were gathered to talk about bridge-building,” Kalin said. “So it’s painfully, painfully ironic that at a time we were thinking about bridge-building, someone came in with such hate and destruction.”

“We wanted to counter the ‘us vs. them’ narrative and come together in shared humanity.”

The suspect shouted “Free, free Palestine” after being taken into police custody, where he “implied” that he shot Milgrim and Lischinsky, Washington Police Chief Pamela Smith said.

The victims were leaving the event at the museum around 9 p.m., said Yechiel Leiter, Israel’s ambassador to the United States. He said Lischinsky had purchased an engagement ring and was intending to propose on the couple’s upcoming trip to Jerusalem.

Though the event was traumatizing, the Kalins said they are undeterred in their greater mission.

“We’re not going to give up,” Yoni River Kailin said. “We’re going to keep bringing together coalitions of Muslims, Jews and Christians and other religions, and we’re going to we’re going to keep trying to find solutions to help the people that need it. This is not going to deter us. If anything, this is going to empower us to move forward.”