ACWORTH, Ga. — The police said on Wednesday that the gunman who shot and killed eight people at massage parlors in the Atlanta area on Tuesday indicated that he had a “sexual addiction” and may have targeted spas that he had visited in the past.
The police said the gunman claimed that he had not targeted the victims, six of whom were Asian, because of their race, but they cautioned that it was too early in the investigation to be sure that there wasn’t a racial motivation.
“He does claim that it was not racially motivated,” Capt. Jay Baker of the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office said. “He apparently has an issue, what he considers a sex addiction.”
Mr. Baker added that he saw the spas as “a temptation for him that he wanted to eliminate.”
The authorities said the gunman had told them he was driving to Florida when he was caught, and Mr. Baker said he may have been trying to commit similar violence at a business connected to the “porn industry” there. He was stopped after his parents alerted the police that they believed their son might be the suspect, and the police were able to track his phone.
“He made indicators that he has some issues, potentially sexual addiction, and may have frequented some of these places in the past,” said Sheriff Frank Reynolds of Cherokee County.
“We believe he frequented these places in the past and may have been lashing out,” Sheriff Reynolds said.
All but one of the victims were women, the police said.
The police arrested Robert Aaron Long, 21, of Woodstock, Ga., who is white, about 150 miles south of Atlanta in Crisp County after a manhunt, the authorities said. They had earlier released a surveillance image of a suspect near a Hyundai Tucson outside one of the massage parlors. Mr. Baker said Mr. Long had admitted to the shootings and that he appeared to be acting alone.
“Whether it’s senseless violence that we’ve seen play out in our streets, or more targeted violence like we saw yesterday, a crime against any community is a crime against us all,” Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms of Atlanta said.
Four people died in the first shooting, at Young’s Asian Massage near Acworth, a northwest suburb of Atlanta, Mr. Baker said. 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.
Six of the eight people killed in the shootings were Asian and two were white, the authorities said, raising fears that the women could have been targeted because of their race, even as the police said it was too early to know. Seven of the victims were women.
An official from the South Korean Consulate in Atlanta, citing the Foreign Ministry in Seoul, confirmed on Wednesday that four of the eight killed were ethnic Koreans. But the nationalities of the four women were not immediately known, the official said.
There have been nearly 3,800 reports of hate incidents targeting Asian-Americans nationwide since last March, according to Stop AAPI Hate. The group said the shootings on Tuesday “will only exacerbate the fear and pain that the Asian-American community continues to endure.”
Atlanta officials did not ask other massage parlors in the area to shut down as a precautionary measure, the police chief, Rodney Bryant, said at a news conference. But fear was palpable among some who work in the massage industry. A woman who answered the phone at Healing Massage Spa and identified herself as a manager said that after the shootings were reported on the news, her boss told her to close for the night.
About a 30-minute drive northwest of the Atlanta spas, Young’s Asian Massage is tucked in a modest strip mall, with a beauty salon on one side and a boutique on the other. Like much of suburban Georgia, it is a diverse place, with panaderias and Latin businesses and American-style chain restaurants.
On Tuesday night, the blue lights of police vehicles cast an eerie glow as detectives worked inside the spa.
Rita Barron, 47, the owner of Gabby’s Boutique next door, was with a group of onlookers standing near a used car lot. She said she had been with a customer when she heard noises through the wall that sounded like claps — and then women screaming.
She called 911, and soon saw victims being taken out by police officers.
Nearby, a wail of anguish went up from another cluster of people waiting for any news. Three dropped to the pavement, two of them embracing and shaking as they cried.
Authorities, Atlanta residents and Asian-American groups across the country reacted with shock and outrage to the massage parlor shootings that killed eight people on Tuesday evening.
“A motive is still not clear, but a crime against any community is a crime against us all,” Keisha Lance Bottoms, the mayor of Atlanta, said in a statement on Wednesday morning that praised the efforts of law enforcement.
“My prayers are with the families and friends of the victims whose lives were cut short by these shootings,” she said.
Reacting to reports that the crimes may have targeted people of Asian descent, Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia said on Twitter, “Once again we see that hate is deadly.”
“Our entire family is praying for the victims of these horrific acts of violence,” Georgia’s governor, Brian Kemp, said on Twitter.
The U.S. Secretary of State, Antony J. Blinken, reacted to the shootings during a visit to Seoul on Wednesday to speak with South Korea’s foreign minister, Chung Eui-yong.
“I want to mention the attacks that happened just a few hours ago in Atlanta, in which several women were killed, including, we believe, four women of Korean descent,” Mr. Blinken said. “We are horrified by this violence, which has no place in America or anywhere.”
The Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus said the group was “horrified by the news coming out of GA at a time when we’re already seeing a spike in anti-Asian violence. Although details are still unfolding, at least half of the victims appear to be Asian-American women. Our hearts go out to the victims & their families.”
Sung Yeon Choimorrow, the director of the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum, said in a statement on social media that the group was “concerned for the safety of our community members across the country as violence toward Asian-Americans has escalated.”
“Even before the pandemic and the racist scapegoating that came in its wake, AAPI women routinely experienced racialized misogyny,” she said. “Now, our community, particularly women, elders, and workers with low-wage jobs, are bearing the brunt of continued vilification.”
The statement, which noted that anti-Asian hate and violence disproportionately impacts women, included testimony from the mother of a member of group’s Atlanta chapter who works in a hair salon.
“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,” it said. “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.”
Debra and Gregory Welch, who live in the Piedmont Heights neighborhood in the northeast area of Atlanta, near where four women were shot at two massage parlors, said it was usually quiet and peaceful, although they referred to the stretch where the shootings took place as the community’s “red-light district.” On the same block, near Cheshire Bridge Road, there is another massage parlor, a tattoo shop and a strip club.
“It’s for sure disturbing,” Mr. Welch said of the shootings, “but even more so if it’s related to an anti-Asian factor from the Covid pandemic.”
Name-calling, shunning and assault were among the nearly 3,800 hate incidents reported against Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders nationwide over the last year, according to Stop AAPI Hate.
Stop AAPI Hate was formed in March of last year to prevent discrimination during the coronavirus pandemic. The group collects data on hate and harassment incidents against Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders in the United States.
In a report released on Tuesday, the group said it had received reports of 3,292 incidents between March 1 and to Feb. 28. But it said the number could be higher because not all incidents are reported.
The report was released the same day that eight people, six of them Asian, were fatally shot at three Atlanta-area massage parlors. Stop AAPI Hate called the shootings “an unspeakable tragedy” for the victims’ families and an Asian-American community that has “been reeling from high levels of racist attacks.”
It said the shootings “will only exacerbate the fear and pain that the Asian-American community continues to endure.”
The incidents compiled by AAPI Hate included mostly verbal harassment and name-calling, or about 68 percent of those reported, while shunning, or the deliberate avoidance of Asian-Americans, composed about 20 percent. About 11 percent of the reports involved physical assault, the report said.
Activists and elected officials say attacks were fueled early in the pandemic by former President Donald J. Trump, who frequently used racist language to refer to the coronavirus.
Stop AAPI Hate said in its report that some of the people who reported hate incidents said they were spat at or coughed on. One person, a Pacific Islander, reported that while speaking Chamorro at a Dallas mall a woman coughed and said, “You and your people are the reason why we have corona.” She then said, “Go sail a boat back to your island,” according to the group.
Chinese people composed the largest ethnic group (42.2 percent) that reported experiencing hate events, followed by Koreans, Vietnamese and Filipinos.
Most of the incidents took place against women, in businesses and on public sidewalks or streets, the report said. But the events included civil rights violations such as workplace discrimination or refusal of service and online harassment.
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