Victims of Atlanta spa shootings included mothers, Army veteran

ATLANTA — Investigators on Friday released the names of the four women killed during Tuesday’s mass shooting at two Atlanta spas.

The Fulton County Medical Examiner’s Office identified the women as 74year-old Soon C. Park, 51year-old Hyun Jung Grant, 69-year-old Suncha Kim and 63-year-old Yong A. Yue.

The other four victims, whose names were released earlier this week, were Daoyou Feng, 44; Xiaojie “Emily” Tan, 49; Delaina Ashley Yaun Gonzalez, 33; and Paul Andre Michels, 54. Elcias R. Hernandez-Ortiz, 30, sustained serious but non-life-threatening injuries.

The suspect, 21-year-old Robert Aaron Long, was arrested in South Georgia on Tuesday night following the shooting spree.

Grant, a mother of two, lived in Duluth, her son Randy Park said on a fundraising page. She was the only family he and his younger brother had in America and worked hard to provide for them, he wrote.

“She was one of my best friends and the strongest influence on who we are today,” Park said. “Losing her has put a new lens on my eyes on the amount of hate that exists in our world. As much as I want to grieve and process the reality that she is gone, I have a younger brother to take care of and matters to resolve as a result of this tragedy.”

Yue just wanted to work. A licensed massage therapist, she was laid off at the start of the pandemic last year and was excited to finally start shifts at the spa again, her son Elliott Peterson, 42, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Friday morning.

Yue’s youngest child, Robert Peterson, 38, agreed, recalling their mother as a kind and deeply caring woman. If you stopped by her house, she’d sit you down, ask if you’d eaten, and then insist on a trip to H Mart grocery store so she could make a meal.

”She feeds all my friends,” Robert Peterson said, adding that the friends loved her Korean home cooking. When Yue wasn’t working, she could be found taking someone flowers, food, gifts, that little extra cash they needed to make rent, the sons said in front of their mom’s Duluth home.

Otherwise she was probably with her dog, Lyong, a Shih Tzu mix with a pink collar lined with diamonds.

Michels, the lone man killed in the shootings, was an Army veteran originally from Detroit, had recently begun work as a handyman at Young’s Asian Massage. He also owned an electric company, friends told Vox.

“He was just a regular guy, very good-hearted, very soft-natured,” his brother John Michaels told the online media outlet.

Yaun Gonzalez was mother to 13-year-old Mayson and 8-month-old Mia. She’d been looking forward to a relaxing night out with her husband after her shift at the Waffle House just down the street from Young’s Asian Massage, friends told Vox.

Mario Gonzalez, her husband of one year, survived the shooting at Young’s. He is “taking (the situation) hard,” friends said.