Man charged with killing 8 at massage businesses
ATLANTA — A white gunman was charged Wednesday with killing eight people at three Atlanta-area massage parlors in an attack that sent terror through the Asian American community that’s increasingly been targeted during the coronavirus pandemic.
Robert Aaron Long, 21, told police that Tuesday’s attack was not racially motivated and claimed to have a “sex addiction,” with authorities saying he apparently lashed out at what he saw as sources of temptation. His parents called police after authorities posted his photo, helping lead to his capture.
Six of the victims were of Asian descent and seven were women.
The shootings appear to be at the “intersection of gender-based violence, misogyny and xenophobia,” state Rep. Bee Nguyen said, the first Vietnamese American to serve in the Georgia House and a frequent advocate for women and communities of color.
Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said that regardless of the shooter’s motivation, “it is unacceptable, it is hateful and it has to stop.”
Authorities said they didn’t know if Long ever went to the massage parlors where the shootings occurred but that he was heading to Florida to attack “some type of porn industry.”
“He apparently has an issue, what he considers a sex addiction, and sees these locations as something that allows him to go to these places, and it’s a temptation for him that he wanted to eliminate,” Cherokee County sheriff’s Capt. Jay Baker told reporters.
A day after the shootings, investigators were trying to unravel what might have compelled the 21-year-old to commit the worst mass killing in the U.S. in almost two years.
Sheriff Frank Reynolds said it was too early to tell if the attack was racially motivated — “but the indicators right now are it may not be.”
The Atlanta mayor said police have not been to the massage parlors in her city beyond a minor potential theft.
“We certainly will not begin to blame victims,” Bottoms said.
The attack was the sixth mass killing this year in the U.S., and the deadliest since the August 2019 Dayton, Ohio, shooting that left nine people dead, according to a database compiled by The Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University.
It follows a lull in mass killings during the pandemic in 2020, which had the smallest number of such attacks in more than a decade, according to the database, which tracks mass killings defined as four or more dead, not including the shooter.
The killings horrified the Asian American community, which saw the shootings as an attack on them, given a recent wave of assaults that coincided with the spread of the coronavirus across the United States. The virus was first identified in China, and then-President Donald Trump and others have used racially charged terms to describe it.
The attacks began when five people were shot at Youngs Asian Massage Parlor near Woodstock, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) north of Atlanta, authorities said. Four died: 33-year-old Delaina Ashley Yaun, 54-yearold Paul Andre Michels, 44-year-old Daoyou Feng and 49-year-old Xiaojie Tan, who owned the business.
Yaun’s relatives told local news outlets that she and her husband were first-time customers on a date when the shooting began.
“I’m lost, I’m confused, I’m hurt. I’m numb,” Margaret Rushing, Yaun’s mother, told WAGA-TV.
Yaun leaves behind a 13-year-old son and 8-month-old daughter.
Her half-sister, Dana Toole, said Yaun’s husband locked himself in a room and wasn’t injured.
“He’s taking it hard,” Toole said. “He was there. He heard the gunshots
and everything. You can’t escape that when you’re in a room and gunshots are flying — what do you do?”
The manager of a boutique next door said her husband watched surveillance video after the shooting and the suspect was sitting in his car for as long as an hour before going inside.
They heard screaming and women running from the business, said Rita Barron, manager of Gabby’s Boutique.
The same car was then spotted about 30 miles away in Atlanta, where a call came in about a robbery at Gold Spa and three women were shot to death. Another woman was fatally shot at the Aromatherapy Spa across the street.
Long was arrested hours later by Crisp County deputies and state troopers. He refused to stop on a highway and officers bumped the back of his car, causing him to crash, Sheriff Billy Hancock said.
Officers found Long thanks to help from his parents, who recognized him from surveillance footage posted by authorities and gave investigators his cellphone information, which they used to track him, said Reynolds, the Cherokee County sheriff.
“They’re very distraught, and they were very helpful in this apprehension,” he said.
WASHINGTON — House Republicans narrowly voted Wednesday to allow their members to seek earmarks under certain conditions, making a clean break from a decade-long ban against seeking money for specific projects in their home states.
The 102-84 vote changes the party’s internal rules and allows Republicans to join the Democratic House majority as it puts in place a new process for earmarks in spending and transportation bills. Republicans were faced with a decision of whether to participate in earmarking, a practice they had railed against in the past, or potentially see their districts disadvantaged when it came to federal spending.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said some Republicans were concerned about letting President Joe Biden’s administration decide where federal dollars would go for transportation and elsewhere.
“I think members here know what’s most important about what’s going on in their district, not Biden,” McCarthy said.
In line with the rules established by Democrats, the policy change approved by Republicans specifies that no member shall ask for an earmark unless it is publicly disclosed when it is made. Each request must include a written justification for why the project is an appropriate use of taxpayer dollars. And the lawmaker and their immediately family cannot have a financial interest in the request.
The return of earmarking could have enormous implications for the allocation of spending across the country, making it easier for Democrats to pass annual bills funding the government. It also could help Biden, who is gearing up for an infrastructure push that he hopes will attract significant Republican support. With earmarking in place, bipartisanship could prove easier to achieve.
But the practice also carries risk for both sides. Earmarking was linked to corruption in the 2000s, leading to an outcry and their banishment in both the House and Senate.
“My predecessor was
Speaker [John] Boehner. I think he was wise to end them,” said Rep. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio. “He saw the abuses that were taking place with them.”
Many in Congress say the ban has gone too far, ceding the “power of the purse” to party leaders and the executive branch while giving lawmakers less incentive to work with members of the other party on major legislation. That frustration spurred Democratic appropriators to revive earmarking, announcing they will accept public requests for “community project funding” in federal spending bills.
House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., said she was pleased that members of both parties recognize that the targeted funding “will help our communities, particularly now as the pandemic has exposed so many needs.”
She said the appropriations bills for the coming fiscal year would put members’ “firsthand knowledge of their districts to work on behalf of the people we represent.”
While the policy change could also enhance efforts to reach agreement on major legislation such as an infrastructure bill, other factors, such as how to pay for it, could play a much bigger role. But Republican lawmakers acknowledge that earmarks could change their calculus on some legislation.
“It’s true, you’re less likely to vote against the bill if you’re got some things in it that are important to you,” said Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho.
Still, Simpson expected the decision won’t sit well with some conservative groups.
“We’re going to get the heck beat out of us by rightwing media and television, and that kind of stuff,” Simpson said.
Rep. Ted Budd, R-N.C., said that even if Republicans and Democrats start requesting earmarks for local projects in future bills, he will not participate.
“I don’t think this puts us at a disadvantage because they didn’t send me here to bring pork home,” Budd said. “They sent me here to be an effective representative of the state, and people are tired of the overspending.”