A man accused of killing eight people — six of them Asian women — at three Atlanta-area spas in March has pleaded guilty to killing four of the victims. Robert Aaron Long was sentenced to four life sentences by a Cherokee County judge, and is now expected to be transferred to Fulton County to face charges in the murders of the four other victims there.
During a hearing Tuesday, Long, 22, admitted to killing the four Cherokee County victims — Xiaojie “Emily” Tan, 49; Daoyou Feng, 44; Delaina Yaun, 33; and Paul Michels, 54. Prosecutors in Fulton County, where Suncha Kim, 69; Soon Chung Park, 74; Hyun Jung Grant, 51; and 63-year-old Yong Ae Yue were slain, have said they intend to seek hate crime enhancements and the death penalty. Long, who is White, is expected to be arraigned there before August 6.
Tuesday, however, a prosecutor said Cherokee County investigators saw no evidence of racial bias, which is at odds with the hate crime enhancement he faces in Atlanta, and is sure to frustrate observers outraged over his apparent targeting of Asian women in the shootings.
“This was not any kind of hate crime,” District Attorney Shannon Wallace said.
Cherokee County Superior Court Chief Judge Ellen McElyea accepted the plea deal after noting that two of the victims were not Asian, and one was male.
“Once hatred is given a gun, it doesn’t matter who gets in the way. We are all subject to being the victim of a hate crime, whether we belong to that group or not,” the judge said.
Long walked through the massage business in Woodstock “shooting anyone and everyone he saw,” Wallace said. But the prosecutor said he was motivated by a “sex addiction” and his desire to eliminate sources of his temptation, not by any hate against Asians or women. As for gender bias, Wallace said a hate crime enhancement based on hatred of women would not have significantly extended his sentence.
Speaking in court, Long said that he had frequented the spas and considered killing himself before the attack, but described shifting blame from himself to those inside the spa, reports the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
“I wanted to stop the places and basically punish the people that I could…,” Long told the judge.
Long said he killed Michels first after seeing him come out of a bathroom and then continued the deadly rampage, saying he didn’t recognize any of the victims, the paper reports.
“I don’t recall thinking much after I pulled the trigger first,” Long said. “My mind felt like it was blank.”
According to the paper, Michels’ widow Bonnie Michels told the judge she had been married to her husband, a business owner who served in the Army, for 24 years and had planned to grow old with him. A surviving victim who was shot and wounded, Elcias Hernandez-Ortiz, said he is thankful to God that he is alive, but the aftermath has been difficult for him and his family, including a 10-year-old daughter.
Wallace said they had planned to seek the death penalty if Long didn’t plead guilty. All the relatives of the victims that they’ve been able to contact are supporting the plea deal in the interests of swift justice, she added.
Police have said the attacks began when Long shot and killed four people, three of them women and two of Asian descent, at Youngs Asian Massage just before 5 p.m. on March 16, 2020. He also shot and wounded a fifth person, they say.
Long then drove south to Atlanta, where he shot and killed three women at Gold Spa before going across the the street to Aromatherapy Spa and fatally shooting another woman, police said. All of the Atlanta victims were women of Asian descent.
Georgia’s new hate crimes law does not provide for a stand-alone hate crime. After a person is convicted of an underlying crime, a jury must determine whether it’s motivated by bias, which carries an additional penalty.
The 19-count Fulton County indictment includes charges of murder, felony murder, aggravated assault and domestic terrorism.
Police said that after the shootings at the two Atlanta spas, Long got back into his car and headed south.
By then, Long’s parents had called authorities to help after recognizing their son in still images from security video that the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office posted on social media. His parents were already tracking his movements through an application on his phone, the prosecutor said, and that enabled authorities to track their son down Interstate 75.
State troopers and sheriff’s deputies spotted his SUV, and one of them forced Long to spin to a stop by bumping his vehicle. Long then surrendered to authorities in rural Crisp County, about 140 miles south of Atlanta.
Long told police his attack was not racially motivated, and a Cherokee sheriff’s spokesman said it did not appear to be a hate crime, prompting widespread skepticism and outrage.
“He apparently has an issue, what he considers a sex addiction, and sees these locations as something that allows him to go to these places, and it’s a temptation for him that he wanted to eliminate,” Cherokee sheriff’s Capt. Jay Baker initially told reporters.
Baker also drew criticism for saying Long had “a really bad day,” and was removed from the case.
State Rep. Bee Nguyen, the first Vietnamese American to serve in the Georgia House and a frequent advocate for women and communities of color, said the shootings appeared to be at the “intersection of gender-based violence, misogyny and xenophobia.” Advocates say Asian-American women struggle with both racism and sexism in a culture that often hypersexualizes and objectifies them. Women reported nearly 65% of anti-Asian hate incidents nationally between March 2020 and March 2021, according to data released by the advocacy group Stop AAPI Hate.
