Eight killed in Atlanta shootings

Eight people were shot to death at three massage parlours in the Atlanta area on Tuesday evening, the authorities said, raising fears that the crimes may have targeted people of Asian descent., with a 21-year-old man in custody on suspicion of staging all three attacks, police said.

Six of the people killed were Asian, and two were white, according to law enforcement officials. All but one were women.

A suspect, identified as Robert Aaron Long, 21, of Woodstock, Ga., was captured in Crisp County, about 150 miles south of Atlanta, after a manhunt, said the authorities, who had earlier released a surveillance image of a suspect near a Hyundai Tucson outside one of the massage parlours.

Although it was not clear whether there was a racial motivation in the shootings, Stop AAPI Hate, formed to prevent anti-Asian discrimination during the coronavirus pandemic, called them “an unspeakable tragedy” for both the victims’ families and an Asian-American community that has “been reeling from high levels of racist attacks.”

The Atlanta police initially characterized the shooting at one of the parlors in the city as a robbery in progress. The suspect in custody is white.

Four people died in the first shooting, at Young’s Asian Massage near Acworth, a northwest suburb of Atlanta, said Capt. Jay Baker of the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office. That shooting, in which a Hispanic man was injured, was reported around 5 p.m.

At 5:47 p.m., the Atlanta police said, officers responded to a robbery at Gold Spa in the northeast part of the city, where they found the bodies of three women with gunshot wounds. While the officers were at the scene, the police said, they received a report of shots fired at the Aromatherapy Spa across the street, where they found the body of another woman.

The Atlanta police department separately confirmed that four women were found dead at two business establishments in northeast Atlanta, identified as the Gold Massage Spa and Aroma Therapy spa.

Police told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that all four Atlanta victims were Asian women.

South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency reported the country’s foreign ministry had confirmed that four of the victims were of Korean descent.

Authorities have identified Robert Aaron Long as a suspect in all three shootings.

Based on the pattern of surveillance video from the shooting scenes, Atlanta police spokesman Sergeant John Chafee said: “It is extremely likely our suspect is the same as Cherokee County’s, who is in custody.”

“We are working closely with them to confirm with certainty our cases are related,” he added.

Long was taken into custody after a “brief pursuit” about 150 miles (240 kilometers) from Atlanta, according to a statement by the Georgia Department of Safety on Facebook.

Describing the scene in northeast Atlanta, the city police department said: “Upon arrival, officers located three females deceased inside the location from apparent gunshot wounds.”

While on the scene, officers were advised of shots fired across the street, where they found a fourth female victim.

Adriana Mejia, niece of one of the victims, said the family was “devastated” after her uncle was shot and that they were praying for his recovery.