Atlanta spa shootings spark racial hate fears

Law enforcement personnel outside a massage parlour where a person was shot and killed in Atlanta, Georgia. (AFP)

The suspect in the killing of eight people at spas that employed Asian women in and around Atlanta indicated he had sexual addiction issues and may have not been motivated by racial hatred, law enforcement officials said yesterday.Regardless of the motivation, the killings have intensified fears in Asian-American communities around the country that have been the target of numerous attacks since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic a year ago. Six of the eight victims were Asian women.Officials said that the 21-year-old suspect, Robert Aaron Long, indicated he may have frequented the spas where Tuesday’s violence occurred, although authorities could not immediately confirm he had visited any of them in the past. He was heading to Florida when he was apprehended, perhaps to carry out further shootings.“The suspect did take responsibility for the shooting,” Captain Jay Baker of the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Department told a news conference.“These locations, he sees them as an outlet for him, something that he shouldn’t be doing,” Baker said. “It’s a temptation for him that he wanted to eliminate.” It was not clear if the suspect visited the spas for sex.Long was taken into custody in Crisp County, about 150 miles south of Atlanta, and, according to media reports, was charged with four counts of murder and one count of aggravated assault. Little information about Long was available. He lived in Woodstock in Cherokee County, north of Atlanta, and attended Crabapple First Baptist Church in Milton, an Atlanta suburb. A photo released by authorities showed a white man with a long and scraggly brown beard.US authorities were trying to determine whether the attacks were inspired by an anti-immigrant or anti-Asian motivation or some personal grievance. While the investigations continue, the shootings raised concerns more broadly about violence directed toward women and minorities.President Joe Biden said he had been briefed by the attorney general and the director of the FBI on the shootings.“The question of motivation is still to be determined,” Biden told reporters at the White House. “But whatever the motivation here I know that Asian-Americans are very concerned.”A report by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism this month showed that hate crimes against Asian-Americans in 16 major US cities rose by 149% from 2019 to 2020, a period when overall hate crimes dropped 7%.The bloodshed began about 5pm on Tuesday when four people were killed and another was wounded at Young’s Asian Massage in Cherokee County, about 40 miles north of Atlanta, Baker said.Two women of Asian descent were among the dead there, along with a white woman and a white man, Baker said. The surviving victim was a Hispanic man.In Atlanta, Georgia’s state capital, police officers responding to a call of a “robbery in progress” shortly before 6pm arrived at the Gold Spa beauty salon and found three women shot dead, Police Chief Rodney Bryant told reporters.While investigating the initial report, the officers were called to a separate aromatherapy spa across the street where another woman was found dead from a gunshot wound, Bryant said. All four women killed in Atlanta were of Asian descent.Long was spotted in southern Georgia, far from the crime scenes, after police in Cherokee County issued a bulletin providing a description and license plates of the vehicle involved in the attacks.He was arrested without incident after a highway pursuit by Georgia state police and Crisp County Sheriff’s deputies, law enforcement officials said.His arraignment is scheduled for today, they said.Long’s quick apprehension was aided by his family’s co-operation with law enforcement and by footage of the suspect from security cameras at the shootings’ locations, police said.“We are really appreciative of the family. Without them this would not have happened as quickly as it happened. They were very supportive,” Baker said.The killings were the latest in a string of mass shootings at schools, movie theatres, medical clinics and other public places in the United States over the past decades.Police departments in Atlanta and New York City said they would beef up presence around businesses and in Asian communities in the wake of the shootings.