All of the eight victims in the deadly shooting rampage in Georgia have been identified Friday, including an Army veteran, a newlywed, and hardworking single mother-of-two.
The names of the victims are:
Delaina Ashley Yaun, 33
Paul Andre Michels, 54
Xiaojie Tan, 49
Daoyou Feng, 44
Soon C. Park, 44
Hyun J. Grant, 51
Suncha Kim, 69
Yong Yue, 63
The medical examiner who performed autopsies on Suncha, Yong, Grant, and Park concluded that all but Kim died from gunshots to the head.
“They’re innocent. They did nothing wrong,” Margaret Rushing, Yaun’s mother said in an interview.
“I just don´t understand why he took my daughter.”
Dana Toole, Yaun’s sister, said her husband could hear the gunfire inside the spa but was helpless to save his wife.
“He’s taking it hard. When you´re in a room and gunshots are flying, what do you do?” Toole said.
21-year-old Robert Aaron Long has been charged with murder after four people at two spas in Atlanta and four more in a spa in Cherokee County died on Tuesday’s attack.
Police said on Wednesday that Long was a customer at two out of the three spas he targeted and that his attack was not racially motivated.
Instead, police defended that Long had been suffering from his sex and pornography addiction, and his desire was to eliminate the sources of his temptation.
On Thursday, law enforcement officials in Atlanta and Cherokee County said they are actively investigating the case and have not ruled out that the attack was a hate crime.
The statement comes after Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Captain Jay Baker said in a news conference on Wednesday that the suspect just had “a really bad day” and “this is what he did.”
His comment and the discovery of a Facebook post that Baker appeared to have written to promote a T-shirt with racist language about China and the coronavirus sparked widespread condemnation, calling for his termination.