Atlanta Police Investigating Suspect's Motive in Deadly Massage Parlor Attacks

A white gunman was charged Wednesday with killing eight people, most of them women of Asian descent, at three Atlanta-area massage parlors in an attack that sent terror through the Asian American community that's increasingly been targeted during the coronavirus pandemic.

Robert Aaron Long, 21, told police that the attack was not racially motivated and claimed to have a “sex addiction,” with authorities saying he apparently lashed out at what he saw as sources of temptation. Six of the victims were identified as Asian and seven were women.

The shootings appear to be at the “intersection of gender-based violence, misogyny and xenophobia,” state Rep. Bee Nguyen said, the first Vietnamese American to serve in the Georgia House and a frequent advocate for women and communities of color.

Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said that regardless of the shooter’s motivation, “it is unacceptable, it is hateful and it has to stop.”

Authorities said that they didn't know if Long ever went to the massage parlors where the shootings occurred but that he was planning to go to Florida in a plot to attack “some type of porn industry."

"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 County sheriff’s Capt. Jay Baker told reporters.

When asked whether somebody could have sexual encounters at the businesses, Bottoms did not answer, saying she did not want “to get into victim blaming, victim shaming here." She said police have not been to the parlors in her city beyond a minor potential theft.

Sheriff Frank Reynolds said it was too early to tell if the attack was racially motivated — “but the indicators right now are it may not be." Neither he nor Baker clarified their statements, and Baker did not return a text message seeking more details.

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