8 people killed, including 6 Asian women, in shooting spree across 3 Georgia spas
Eight people were killed Tuesday at three different spas in northwest Georgia, police said. Six of the victims were Asian women.
Investigators said Robert Aaron Long, 21, is the main suspect in all three shootings, local NBC affiliate WXIA reported. Long was arrested Tuesday night after a car chase.
Cops said Long’s shooting spree began around 4:50 p.m. in Acworth, about 25 miles north of Atlanta, at Young’s Asian Massage Parlor, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Two Asian women, a white woman and a white man were fatally shot, and a Hispanic man was hospitalized.
About an hour later, four Asian women were killed at two spas in Atlanta, local CBS affiliate WGCL reported. Three women were fatally shot at Gold Spa in northeast Atlanta, and a fourth was killed across the street at Aromatherapy Spa.
The Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office, the initial investigators at the first shooting, released surveillance footage of a man they identified as Long leaving the scene. Atlanta cops said the same man, driving the same car, was spotted at the later two shootings, according to WXIA.
Shortly after the photo was released, Long was arrested in Crisp County, about 125 miles south of Atlanta, local ABC affiliate WSB reported. Police said they disabled Long’s car with a PIT maneuver.
Cops are still investigating a potential motive for all three shootings, and therefore have not concluded if the killings were racially motivated.
Anti-Asian violence has increased throughout the United States since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.
“You go to work, and you’re trying to earn money, and you have your family to feed, and you’re just trying to survive and be like everyone else,” an Atlanta hair salon worker said in a statement through the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum. “And then stuff like this happens and it’s so scary. I am a part of the Vietnamese immigrant community, and I fear for our safety.”
