Killings in Atlanta

At least eight people, including six Asian women, were killed in shootings 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, police said.

The shootings came with many Asian Americans already on edge following a recent spike in hate crimes against the community and triggered immediate fears that Asian-run businesses may have been deliberately singled out.

  alJazeera

May have been? 

Captain Jay Baker of the Cherokee County sheriff’s office told the paper the victims were two Asian women, a white woman and a white man, while a Hispanic man was wounded [at Young’s Asian Massage near Acworth, a suburb of Atlanta].

The Atlanta police department separately confirmed that four women were found dead at two business establishments in northeast Atlanta, identified as the Gold Massage Spa and Aroma Therapy spa.

Police told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that all four Atlanta victims were Asian women.

[...]

Long was taken into custody after a “brief pursuit” about 240 kilometres (150 miles) from Atlanta, according to a statement by the Georgia Department of Safety on Facebook.

[...]

While racial motivation can be hard to establish, a study by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at CSU San Bernardino found that reported anti-Asian hate crimes nearly tripled from 49 to 122 cases last year across 16 big US cities including New York and Los Angeles – even as overall hate crime fell seven percent.

Making America great again.

Atlanta Police said video footage placed the suspect's vehicle in the area of the Atlanta spas around the time of the two later shootings. "That, along with video evidence viewed by investigators, suggests it is extremely likely our suspect is the same as Cherokee County's, who is in custody," the department said in a statement.

[...]

Authorities circulated images of a man suspected in the Acworth shooting. He was caught on surveillance footage pulling up to the massage parlor in a 2007 black Hyundai Tucson shortly before the attack.

Crisp County Sheriff Billy Hancock said his deputies and state troopers were alerted at around 8 p.m. that a murder suspect out of north Georgia was heading toward their county.

Troopers and deputies set up along Interstate 75 and "made contact with the suspect" at around 8.30 p.m.

[...]

Long was described as "nerdy" and "big into religion" by a former high school classmate, who spoke anonymously to The Daily Beast.

The classmate, who graduated from Sequoyah High School with Long in 2017, said the suspect was "very innocent-seeming and wouldn't even cuss." The person added: "He was sorta nerdy and didn't seem violent from what I remember. He was a hunter and his father was a youth minister or pastor."

The website reported that an Instagram account apparently belonging to Long featured the tagline: "Pizza, guns, drums, music, family, and God. This pretty much sums up my life. It's a pretty good life."

  Newsweek

Aaron Long

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

UPDATE:

Though it is not yet known whether any of the victims of Tuesday’s shooting provided sexual services at their workplaces, Long told police that the spas he opened fire on represented a “temptation he wanted to eliminate”, suggesting that he at least believed that they did.

  Guardian

He could have removed the temptation, avoided jail, and lessened the tragedy by killing only one person - himself.