Shootings in Atlanta: Eight Dead, Suspect Arrested

By Staff, Agencies

Three shootings at massage parlors in and around Atlanta, Georgia on Tuesday left eight people, six of them women of Asian descent, dead.

The attacks began at about 5 p.m. local time when five people were shot at Young’s Asian Massage in Cherokee County, about 40 miles north of Atlanta, according to Captain Jay Baker of the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Department.

Two of the victims were pronounced dead at the scene and three were taken to hospital where two more died of their injuries.

Among the dead were two women of Asian descent along with a white woman and a white man, Baker said.

Meanwhile, in Atlanta, officers responding to a call of a “robbery in progress” around 6 p.m. arrived at Gold Spa in the northeast part of the city, where they found three women shot dead, Police Chief Rodney Bryant told reporters.

While at the scene, the officers received a report of another shooting at a separate aroma-therapy spa across the street where a fourth woman was found dead of a gunshot wound, Bryant said.

All four victims killed in Atlanta were of Asian descent.

A suspect, identified as Robert Aaron Long, 21, was arrested and taken into custody at about 8:30 p.m. in Crisp County, about 150 miles south of Atlanta, after a manhunt.