ATLANTA – At least eight people, most of them Asian women, were killed in a shooting spree at three different spas in the US state of Georgia on Tuesday, with a 21-year-old white man in custody on suspicion of staging all three attacks.
The attacks began around 5pm USA time, when the while man shot five people at Youngs Asian Massage Parlour. Two of the five died at the scene, while another two sadly died in hospital from their injuries.
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.”
Furthermore, officers were also advised of shots fired across the street, where they found a fourth female victim.
Local police have said 21-year-old Robert Aaron Long is the suspect in all three shootings but the potential motivation for the killings is not yet clear. Netizens who saw the news on social media say it is a racial element.
Stop AAPI Hate, a group that tracks anti-Asian violence, said it had received nearly 3,800 reports of hate incidents since mid-March, 2020, around the time Covid-19 pandemic seized the U.S.
A twitter user shared pictures of all the victims in the shooting.
#StopAsianHate #StopAAPIHate Faces of those murdered recently pic.twitter.com/aI41FrRLTY
— Considerate Content (@Consider8Media) March 17, 2021
The shootings come as reports of attacks against Asian-Americans, primarily elders, have spiked in recent months. Many Americans believe it was heightened during the COVID-19 pandemic, by former President Donald Trump’s remarks calling it the “Chinese virus”.
US President Joe Biden, in his first televised address to his nation last week, stressed there were “vicious hate crimes” against Asian Americans since the start of the pandemic, adding people had been “attacked, harassed, blamed and scapegoated”.
“At this very moment, so many of them — our fellow Americans — they’re on the front lines of this pandemic, trying to save lives, and still — still — they are forced to live in fear for their lives just walking down streets in America,” Biden said. “It’s wrong, it’s un-American, and it must stop.”
FBI is assisting local police in the investigations.
