Officials, in a statement on Wednesday, said Robert Aaron Long, 21, the suspect in the fatal shooting, on Tuesday, of eight people at day spas in and around Atlanta, indicated he had issues with sexual addiction.
Law enforcement officials believe that the shootings may have not been motivated by racial hatred.
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They further stated that the suspect appeared to have frequented the spas where the violence occurred or similar ones and that he had been headed to Florida afterward, perhaps to carry out further shootings.
The shootings were the latest instance of violence against Asian Americans in the United States. The bloodshed began about 5 p.m. on Tuesday when four people were killed, two Asian women, a white woman and white man, and another, a Hispanic man, was wounded in a shooting at Young’s Asian Massage in Cherokee County, 40 miles north of Atlanta.
In Atlanta, police officers while responding to a call of a “robbery in progress” shortly before 6 p.m. arrived at the Gold Spa beauty salon and found three women shot dead.
While investigating the initial report, the officers were called to a separate aromatherapy spa across the street where another woman was found dead from a gunshot wound, Bryant said. All four women killed in Atlanta were of Asian descent.
Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said, “This was a tragic day with many victims. But thankfully the suspect was quickly apprehended.”
Six of the eight victims were women of Asian descent. While preliminary investigations appeared to suggest that racial hatred was not the motivation behind the shootings, officials said it was too early to know with certainty.