• Robert Aaron Long agrees plea deal but faces four more charges
• Eight people, six women of Asian descent, died in shootings
A Georgia man charged in the shooting deaths of eight people at three Atlanta-area massage businesses was pleading guilty in Cherokee county on Tuesday, hoping for a sentence of life without parole to the first four cases.
Related: Are police the biggest threat to massage parlor workers’ safety?
Continue reading...The Sandy Hook shooting failed to convince Congress to enact more regulations. In the wake of recent shootings, calls for reform have begun
Within hours of 10 people being gunned down at the King Soopers grocery store in Boulder, Colorado on Monday – the second such bloody rampage in seven days – the calls had begun for Congress to tighten up America’s notoriously slack firearms laws.
John Hickenlooper, a Democratic US senator from Colorado who was governor of the state at the time of the Aurora cinema shooting that killed 12 people in 2012, opined that “our country has a horrific problem with gun violence. We need federal action. Now.”
Continue reading...Law enforcement officials including the director of the FBI have said the shootings in Atlanta in which eight people were killed do not appear to have been racially motivated, but the Georgia senator Raphael Warnock said on Sunday: “We all know hate when we see it.”
Related: Atlanta spa shootings: Georgia hate crimes law could see first big test
Continue reading...After killings that followed a year of escalating hatred, Asian Americans ask why no one heeded the warnings
At 4.54pm on Tuesday, a Hyundai SUV pulled up outside Young’s Asian Massage parlor in the Atlanta suburb of Acworth. Earlier that day the driver, a white man, had popped into Big Woods Goods, a gun store that prides itself on being “fast and friendly”.
Service in the shop was so fast, in fact, that with the benefit of Georgia’s loose gun laws the man was able to buy a 9mm firearm on the spot.
Continue reading...A hate crimes law passed in Georgia amid outrage over the killing of Ahmaud Arbery could get its first major test as part of the murder case against a white man charged with shooting and killing six women of Asian descent at Atlanta-area massage businesses this week.
Related: 'It's time for people to hear us': Georgia's Asian Americans vow to stand up against hate
Continue reading...Surveillance video has emerged showing the shooting suspect Robert Aaron Long leaving Young's massage parlour in Acworth, Georgia, which was attacked on Wednesday. Long has been charged with allegedly killing eight people at three Atlanta-area massage businesses in an attack that sent terror through the Asian American community. He told police the attack was not racially motivated, claiming to have a 'sex addiction'
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris offered solace to Asian Americans and a reeling nation on Friday as they visited Atlanta just days after a white gunman killed eight people, most of them Asian American women. The visit, during a nationwide spike of anti-Asian violence, has added resonance with the presence of Harris, the first person of South Asian descent to hold national office
Continue reading...Names of remaining victims released as more details emerge from family and friends
Authorities have named all of the victims of the Atlanta spa shootings, as Joe Biden and Kamala Harris visited in Atlanta to meet with local Asian American leaders and offered support to a grieving community.
The Fulton county medical examiner’s office on Friday updated the list of shooting victims with the names of four women that had not been previously released. The eight who were killed on Tuesday have now been identified as:
Continue reading...President and vice-president address nation reckoning with ‘heinous act’ that killed eight, including six women of Asian descent
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have condemned a “heinous act of violence” during a trip to Atlanta, hoping to console a city and Asian American communities rocked by the attack this week that left eight people dead and one injured.
Delivering remarks on Friday evening at Emory University after a day spent meeting with Asian American community leaders and politicians, the president and vice-president spoke out forcefully against the shooting, in which six of the victims were women of Asian descent, as well as the rise in anti-Asian violence.
Continue reading...The Asian American lawmaker Grace Meng called out the violence and discrimination against her community at a hearing on Capitol Hill on Thursday. 'Our community is bleeding. We are in pain. And for the last year, we’ve been screaming out for help,' she said. She told a panel the rising tide of anti-Asian bigotry was fuelled in part by rhetoric from Donald Trump and his allies, who have referred to Covid-19 as the 'China virus' and 'kung flu'
The Georgia sheriff’s captain who said Robert Aaron Long was “having a really bad day” when he allegedly killed eight people has been removed as a spokesperson on the case, according to the WSB-TV news channel.
Nicole Carr, a journalist at WSB-TV, reported that Capt Jay Baker “will no longer be spokesperson” on the shootings case. According to Carr, the Cherokee County Sheriff department is also “evaluating what [Baker’s] future at the Sheriff’s Office looks like”.
NEW:Confirmed w Cherokee Sheriff that Cpt.Baker will no longer be spokesperson on spa shootings case,they’re evaluating what his future at the Sheriff’s Office looks like and consulting the D.A.’s office to see if they should hand their portion of case to GBI See you at 6 @wsbtv https://t.co/cI1sQHcrRV
Charles Hampton, deputy chief of Atlanta police, said officers are “working diligently to ascertain all the facts” in the spa shootings.
“We had four Asian females that were killed, and so we are looking at everything to make sure we discover and determine what the motive of our homicides were,” Hampton said during a press conference.
Continue reading...A Georgia sheriff’s captain was criticised for appearing to characterise the actions of the suspect in a mass shooting in Atlanta as him having had 'a really bad day'.
Robert Aaron Long, 21, was charged with killing eight people in Atlanta, six of them women of Asian descent, on Wednesday.
Atlanta police said Long had declared Tuesday’s attack was not racially motivated. He claimed to have a 'sex addiction' and authorities have said he apparently lashed out at what he saw as sources of 'temptation'
Continue reading...The suspect behind shooting attacks that killed eight people in Atlanta was charged with eight counts of murder on Wednesday, with officials saying he may have planned further attacks.
Police and city leaders also indicated they believe Robert Aaron Long, 21, who did not resist arrest when he was apprehended, was on his way to Florida after Tuesday evening’s attack, where they suspect he may have planned to “carry out additional shootings”.
Continue reading...Capt Jay Baker also reportedly posted images on Facebook of T-shirts with racist slogan on China and coronavirus
A Georgia sheriff’s captain has faced widespread criticism for appearing to characterise the actions of Robert Aaron Long, the 21-year-old charged with killing eight people in Atlanta, six of them women of Asian descent, as “having a really bad day”.
Speaking at a news conference on Wednesday, Capt Jay Baker of the Cherokee county sheriff’s office said investigators had interviewed Long that morning.
Continue reading...Kamala Harris said the Atlanta massage parlour shootings were ‘tragic’ and spoke to the larger issue of violence in American society. ‘We must ... never tolerate it and always speak out against it,’ Harris said. Joe Biden said violence against Asian Americans was ‘very, very troubling’, but said was making ‘no connection at this moment of the motivation of the killer’.