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NEW YORK: NYPD is stepping up patrols in Asian communities as a precautionary measure, following deadly attacks at Atlanta day spas on Tuesday (March 16).
Eight people, six of them women of Asian descent, were shot and killed in a series of attacks on day spas in and around Atlanta, and a man suspected of carrying out the shootings was arrested in South Georgia, the said. police.
Although authorities declined to offer a motive for the violence, the attacks prompted the New York Police Department’s counterterrorism unit to announce the deployment of additional patrols to Asian communities there as a precautionary measure.
The South Korean Foreign Ministry said its consulate general in Atlanta had confirmed that the victims included four women of Korean descent, but was verifying their nationality.
The bloodshed began around 5 p.m. Tuesday, when four people were killed and another injured in a shooting at Young’s Asian Massage in Cherokee County, about 40 miles north of Atlanta, said Department Capt.Jay Baker. Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office.
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Two women of Asian descent were among those killed there, along with a white woman and a white man, Baker said, adding that the surviving victim was a Hispanic man.
In Atlanta, the state capital, police officers who responded to a “robbery in progress” call shortly before 6 pm arrived at the Gold Spa salon and found three women shot to death, he told the Press Police Chief Rodney Bryant.
While investigating the initial report, officers were called to a separate aromatherapy spa across the street, where another woman was found dead from a gunshot wound, Bryant said. The four women killed in Atlanta were of Asian descent.
The shootings came with many Asian-Americans already nervous following a recent spike in hate crimes against the community, and sparked immediate fears that Asian-run companies may have been deliberately targeted.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who was visiting South Korea on Wednesday, offered his condolences.
“We are horrified by this violence that is not taking place in the United States or anywhere,” Blinken told South Korean Foreign Minister Chung Eui-yong.
The violence unfolded days after US President Joe Biden used a nationally televised speech to condemn the rise in hate crimes and discrimination against Asian Americans.
Civil rights groups have suggested that former President Donald Trump contributed to the trend by repeatedly referring to the coronavirus as the “China virus” because it first emerged there.
“The president has been briefed overnight on the horrific shootings in Atlanta. White House officials have been in contact with the mayor’s office and will continue to be in contact with the FBI, ”White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in a statement.
SUSPECT IN CUSTODY
Robert Aaron Long, 21, of Woodstock in Cherokee County, was arrested around 8:30 p.m. in Crisp County, about 150 miles (240 km) south of Atlanta. Authorities released a photo of Long, which is white.
Baker told Reuters investigators were “very confident” that the same suspect was the gunman in all three shootings. The Atlanta Police Department said the suspect was connected to all attacks by video evidence from crime scenes.
Investigators were still working “to confirm with certainty” that the shootings in Atlanta and Cherokee County were related.
Long was seen in South Georgia, far from the crime scenes, after Cherokee County Police issued a bulletin with a description and license plates of the vehicle involved in the attacks, Baker said.
He was arrested without incident after a roadside chase by Georgia State Police and Crisp County sheriff’s deputies, sheriff’s deputies later said.
Authorities said the motive for the shooting was not immediately clear and it was not determined whether the victims were targeted because of their race or ethnic origin.
But the counterterrorism branch of the NYPD said on Twitter that while no connection to New York City was known, the department “will deploy assets in our large Asian communities across the city as a precaution.”
Atlanta police said they were intensifying patrols around businesses similar to those attacked Tuesday.
