A 21-year-old male suspect went on a shooting spree in Atlanta and its suburbs, Georgia, USA. The man opened fire at massage parlours and killed eight people, most of them women of Asian descent, CBS42.com reports.
The man was taken into custody, the police suspect that he committed the crime for racial reasons.
The man was captured as a result of the chase. He was identified as 21-year-old Robert Aaron Long. The surveillance footage confirms that he was present at all three locations, where the shootings took place. The FBI opened investigation into the attacks.
The attacks began around 5 p.m., when the shooter killed five people at Youngs Asian Massage Parlor in a strip mall near a rural area in Acworth, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) north of Atlanta. Two people died at the scene and three others died later at hospital.
About an hour later, police in the Buckhead neighborhood of Atlanta, responding to a call of a robbery, found three women dead from apparent gunshot wounds at Gold Spa. When the scene, the police received another call reporting shots fired at another spa across the street. A woman who appeared to have been shot dead inside the shop.
It was later reported that six of the killed victims were of Asian origin, and four were Koreans. Due to possible motives for racial strife, the state took measures to increase police presence in Asian communities.
The killings came amid a recent wave of attacks against Asian Americans that coincided with the spread of the coronavirus across the United States.