Shootings on Tuesday at two massage parlors in Atlanta, Georgia, and one in the suburbs left eight people dead, many of them women of Asian descent, authorities said.
A 21-year-old man suspected in the shootings was taken into custody in southwest Georgia hours later after a search, police said.
The attacks began at about 5pm, when five people were shot at Youngs Asian Massage Parlor in a strip mall near a rural area in Acworth, about 50km north of Atlanta, Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Captain Jay Baker said.
Photo: AFP
Two people died at the scene and three were taken to a hospital, where two of them also died, Baker said.
No one was arrested at the scene.
At about 5:50pm, police in the Buckhead neighborhood of Atlanta, responding to a call of a robbery in progress, found three women dead from apparent gunshot wounds at Gold Spa.
While they were at that scene, they learned of a call reporting shots fired at another spa across the street, Aromatherapy Spa, and found a woman who appeared to have been shot dead inside the business.
“It appears that they may be Asian,” Atlanta Police Chief Rodney Bryant said.
The South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in statement yesterday that its diplomats in Atlanta have confirmed from police that four of the people who died were women of South Korean descent.
“Our entire family is praying for the victims of these horrific acts of violence,” Georgia Governor Brian Kemp wrote on Twitter.
Baker said that a suspect, Robert Aaron Long of Woodstock, was taken into custody in Crisp County, about 240km south of Atlanta.
Crisp County Sheriff Billy Hancock said in a video on Facebook that his deputies and state troopers were notified at about 8pm that a murder suspect out of north Georgia was headed toward their county.
Deputies and troopers set up along the interstate and “made contact with the suspect” at about 8:30pm, Hancock said.
A state trooper performed a pursuit intervention technique, “which caused the [suspect’s] vehicle to spin out of control,” Hancock said.
In South Korea yesterday, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met their South Korean counterparts in Seoul.
“We are horrified by this violence, which has no place in America or anywhere,” Blinken said ahead of a meeting with South Korean Minister of Foreign Affairs Chung Eui-yong.
Additional reporting by Bloomberg
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