Prosecutor planning to seek death penalty in fatal spa shootings
ATLANTA — A man accused of killing eight people, six of them women of Asian descent, in shootings at three Atlanta-area massage businesses was indicted Tuesday on murder charges by two separate grand juries, and one prosecutor filed notice that she’ll also seek hate crime charges and the death penalty.
A Fulton County grand jury indicted Robert Aaron Long, 22, in the March 16 slayings of Suncha Kim, 69; Soon Chung Park, 74; Hyun Jung Grant, 51; and Yong Ae Yue, 63. A separate grand jury in Cherokee County indicted Long for a separate shooting there that resulted in the killings of Xiaojie “Emily” Tan, 49; Daoyou Feng, 44; Delaina Yaun, 33; and Paul Michels, 54.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis also filed notice that she intends to seek hate crime charges and the death penalty against Long, who is white. The hate crime charges are based on the actual or perceived race, national origin, sex and gender of the four women killed, the notice says.
There was no immediate filing in online court records in Cherokee County to indicate whether District Attorney Shannon Wallace intends to seek hate crimes charges or the death penalty.
Georgia’s new hate crimes law does not provide for a stand-alone hate crime.
After a person is convicted of an underlying crime, a jury must determine whether it’s a hate crime, which carries an additional penalty.
The killings are eligible for the death penalty because each was committed while Long was in the act of committing another capital offense, namely the killings of the victims, Willis’ notice of intent says.
Arbery slaying: Three Georgia men pleaded not guilty to federal hate crime charges Tuesday in the slaying of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-yearold Black man who was chased and shot after being spotted running in the white defendants’ neighborhood.
Travis McMichael and his father, Greg McMichael, as well as a neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan, entered their pleas before a U.S. magistrate judge.
A Georgia judge has set a trial in the state’s case for October and will hear pretrial motions later this week.
The McMichaels armed themselves and pursued Arbery in a pickup after he ran past their home Feb. 23, 2020. Bryan joined the chase and took cellphone video of Travis McMichael shooting Arbery three times at close range with a shotgun.
Capitol riot case: Two men charged in the assault of Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who died after defending the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, must remain behind bars while they await trial, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.
U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan denied pretrial release for George Tanios and Julian Khater, calling them threats to the community. The judge said the assault with chemical spray on Sicknick and two other officers contributed to the mob’s ability to breach police line that had been guarding the Capitol.
“These two gentlemen are law-abiding, respected individuals of their community and it makes it very difficult for the court to make this conclusion,” Hogan said. But the government’s evidence and videos of the attack leaves “little doubt” about what transpired, Hogan said.
Tanios, of Morgantown, West Virginia, and Khater, of State College, Pennsylvania, haven’t been charged in Sicknick’s death.
The Washington medical examiner’s office last month found that Sicknick suffered a stroke and died from natural causes. The determination is likely to significantly inhibit the ability of federal prosecutors to bring homicide charges.
West Virginia ‘monster’: A former nursing assistant who killed seven elderly veterans with fatal injections of insulin at a West Virginia hospital was sentenced to life in prison Tuesday by a federal judge who called her “the monster that no one sees coming.”
Reta Mays has a history of mental health issues and offered no explanation Tuesday for why she killed the men in 2017 and 2018. But U.S. District Judge Thomas Kleeh told her “you knew what you were doing” before sentencing her to seven consecutive life terms, a punishment that means she’ll likely die in prison.
Mays, 46, pleaded guilty last year in federal court to seven counts of second-degree murder for intentionally injecting the men with unprescribed insulin at the Louis A. Johnson VA Medical Center in Clarksburg.
The Washington Post: Reenergized under owner Jeff Bezos, The Washington Post named Associated Press veteran Sally Buzbee as its executive editor Tuesday, making her the first woman in the paper’s 144-year history to lead the newsroom. She succeeds the retired Marty Baron in one of the most celebrated jobs in journalism.
Buzbee, 55, has been with the AP since 1988 in jobs that included Washington bureau chief, and has been its senior vice president and executive editor since 2017.
The Post, bought from the Graham family by Amazon’s Bezos in 2013, employs 1,000 journalists in 26 locations around the world. Under Baron, who took over in 2013, it won 10 Pulitzer Prizes and was recognized for its hard-hitting coverage of Donald Trump.
Ganges River mystery: Scores of dead bodies have been found floating down the Ganges River in eastern India as the country battles a ferocious surge in coronavirus infections. Authorities said Tuesday they haven’t yet determined the cause of death.
Health officials working through the night Monday retrieved 71 bodies, officials in Bihar state said.
Images on social media of the bodies floating in the river prompted outrage and speculation that they died from COVID-19. Authorities performed post mortems Tuesday but said they could not confirm the cause of death due to the decomposition of the bodies.
More corpses were found floating in the river Tuesday, washing up in Ghazipur district in neighboring Uttar Pradesh state.
New lay ministry: Pope Francis on Tuesday formally created a new lay ministry to encourage greater participation of secular women and men in the teaching of the Catholic faith, especially in places where priests are in short supply.
The new law creating the lay ministry of catechists officially recognizes for the universal Catholic Church a practice that has been used for centuries in local dioceses and goes out of its way to emphasize women’s participation in it.
In many parts of the world, lay men and women introduce people to the Catholic faith, educate them on receiving the initial sacraments of baptism and Communion, and accompany them in their faith journey.