Shootings at two massage parlors in Atlanta and one in the suburbs Tuesday evening left eight individuals dead, many of them ladies of Asian descent, authorities said. A 21-year-elderly person suspected in the shootings was arrested in southwest Georgia hours after the fact after a manhunt, police said.
The assaults started around 5 p.m., when five persons were shot at Youngs Asian Massage Parlor in a strip shopping center close to a provincial zone in Acworth, around 30 miles (50 kilometers) north of Atlanta, Cherokee Region Sheriff’s Office representative Capt. Jay Bread cook said. Two individuals died at the scene and three were moved to an emergency clinic where two of them passed on, Bread cook said.
Nobody was captured at the scene.
Around 5:50 p.m., police in the Buckhead neighborhood of Atlanta, reacting to a call of a robbery in progress, discovered three ladies dead from obvious gunfire wounds at Gold Spa. While they were at that scene, they learned of a call detailing shots discharged at another spa across the road, Fragrant healing Spa, and found a lady who seemed to have been shot dead inside the business.
“Apparently they might be Asians,” Atlanta Police Boss Rodney Bryant said.
South Korea’s Foreign Service said in statement Wednesday that its diplomats in Atlanta have affirmed from police that four of the casualties who died were ladies of Korean descent. The service said the office of its Consul General in Atlanta is attempting to affirm the identity of the ladies.
The killings came in the midst of a new rush of assaults against Asian Americans that coincided with the spread of the Covid across the US.
“Our whole family is petitioning God for the casualties of these terrible demonstrations of savagery,” Gov. Brian Kemp said Tuesday evening on Twitter.
A man suspected in the Acworth shooting was caught by reconnaissance video pulling up to the business around 4:50 p.m. Tuesday, minutes before the assault, authorities said. Bread cook said the suspect, Robert Aaron Long, of Woodstock, was arrested in Crisp County, around 150 miles (240 kilometers) south of Atlanta.
Baker said they trust Long is likewise the suspect in the Atlanta shootings.
Police said video film showed the suspect’s vehicle nearby the Atlanta spas about the hour of those assaults also. That, just as other video proof, “recommends it is incredibly likely our suspect is the same as Cherokee County’s, who is in custody,” Atlanta police said in a statement. Atlanta and Cherokee District authorities were attempting to affirm the cases are connected.
FBI representative Kevin Rowson said the organization was helping Atlanta and Cherokee District experts in the investigation.
FBI Sheriff Billy Hancock said in a video posted on Facebook that his deputies and state troopers were advised around 8 p.m. that a homicide suspect out of north Georgia was going to their region. Deputies and troopers set up along the highway and “made contact with the suspect,” who was driving a 2007 dark Hyundai Tucson, around 8:30 p.m., he said.
A state trooper played out a PIT, or pursuit intervention method, move, “which made the vehicle lose control,” Hancock said. Long was then arrested “without an incident” and was being held in the Crisp county jail for Cherokee Region, authorities were required to show up soon to proceed with their inquiry.
Because of the shootings, Atlanta police said they dispatched officials to check close by comparable organizations and increased patrols in the area.
