Atlanta (GNB): Eight people, including six Asian women, were killed in shootings at three different massage parlors in Atlanta and Acworth, Georgia, on Tuesday, according to local police.
A male suspect, Robert Aaron Long, was arrested and authorities are “very confident” he is responsible for all three shootings, according to Captain Jay Baker from the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Department.
Authorities said it was not immediately clear if the Asian women were the targets of the shooting and did not offer a motive for the attack.
Robert Aaron Long, 21, has been arrested in connection with a shooting that killed four women at Young’s Asian Massage Parlor in Atlanta. More shootings took place at two other Asian spas in the area. Police have not yet tied those to Long.
Robert Aaron Long was first identified as the suspect in the shooting at Young’s Asian Massage Parlor in Cherokee County that left four people dead and one person injured, according to the sheriff’s office.
He is also a suspect in two more shootings at similar businesses in northeast Atlanta that resulted in four more deaths, according to a sheriff’s office spokesman.
Six of the eight victims were Asian women, authorities said.
The killings occurred amid a rising number of attacks on Asian Americans across the US since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. Six of the eight victims were Asian while two were white.
Four people of Korean descent were among those killed in a series of deadly shootings in the US state of Georgia, Seoul’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Wednesday.
People are condemning anti-Asian violence after eight people were killed in shootings at three different massage parlors in Georgia. Authorities said six of the victims were of Asian descent.
“Our entire family is praying for the victims of these horrific acts of violence,” Georgia’s governor, Brian Kemp, said on Tuesday evening on Twitter. “Once again we see that hate is deadly,” Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia added also Twitter.
The Stop AAPI Hate group issued a statement saying that many in the Asian American community had felt targeted over the past year.
“The reported shootings of multiple Asian American women today in Atlanta is an unspeakable tragedy – for the families of the victims first and foremost, but also for the Asian American community, which has been reeling from high levels of racist attacks over the course of the past year,” it said.
“This latest attack will only exacerbate the fear and pain that the Asian American community continues to endure.”
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