Man charged with killing 8 at Atlanta massage parlors
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 has increasingly been targeted during the coronavirus pandemic.
Robert Aaron Long, 21, told police 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 genderbased 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 regardless of the shooter’s motivation, “it is unacceptable, it is hateful and it has to stop.”
Authorities said they didn’t know if Mr. 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.
Capt. Baker drew criticism for saying Mr. Long had “a really bad day” and “this is what he did.” A Facebook page appearing to belong to Capt. Baker promoted a COVID-19
T-shirt with racist language about China last year.
The Facebook account featured photos of Capt. Baker going back months, including one of him in uniform outside the sheriff’s office. The account was deleted Wednesday night, and Capt. Baker did not immediately respond to voicemails and an email seeking comment.
The Atlanta mayor said police have not been to the massage parlors in her city beyond minor potential theft.
“We certainly will not begin to blame victims,” Ms. 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 attacks began when
five people were shot at Young’s Asian Massage Parlor near Woodstock, about 30 miles north of Atlanta, authorities said. Four died: 33-yearold Delaina Ashley Yaun, 54year-old Paul Andre Michels, 44-year-old Daoyou Feng and 49-year-old Xiaojie Tan, who owned the business.
Ms. 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, Ms. Yaun’s mother, told WAGA-TV.
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.