Man who killed 4 in Atlanta spa shooting spree pleads guilty
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Robert Aaron Long, 22, faces more charges in the killings of four more women at spas in Atlanta, Georgia, where the district attorney has said she believed the women were targeted because of their race and gender.
ATLANTA • A man in the US state of Georgia who claimed to be a sex addict has pleaded guilty to murdering four people as part of a shooting spree in Atlanta that highlighted the fear and intimidation felt by Asian Americans during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Dressed in a white, button-down shirt with an open collar and dress slacks and sporting a mohawk haircut, Robert Aaron Long, 22, pleaded guilty in court to the four murders at a day spa in Cherokee County, about 64km north of Atlanta.
Long, holding his head up but looking sombre, also affirmed agreement with the state's recommendation of four life sentences without possibility of parole, to be served consecutively, plus 35 years on other charges.
He calmly described how he purchased a firearm and a bottle of bourbon and set out to kill himself before deciding to harm the sex industry to which he had a self-proclaimed addiction.
Having been kicked out of his parent's home and despondent over his "sexual struggles", Long told the court that he went to the spa on March 16 to "act out, receive sexual favours and hopefully hate myself enough to... end my own life".
Long still faces charges in the killings later that same day of four more women at spas in Atlanta, where the district attorney has said she believed the women were targeted because of their race and gender. She said she would seek the death penalty.
The massacre galvanised awareness of a wave of anti-Asian bias and violence in the United States following the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, which allegedly originated in China.
But Cherokee District Attorney Shannon Wallace said her office's investigation did not turn up any bias based on race in the fatal shootings of Ms Delaina Ashley Yaun, 33; Mr Paul Andre Michels, 54; Mr Xiaojie Yan, 49; and Mr Daoyou Feng, 44.
The wife of Mr Michels told the court she had looked forward to growing old with her late husband, whom she described as outgoing and a workaholic. "I can't hear his voice anymore. I can't give him hugs and kisses. A part of me died with him," Ms Bonnie Michels said from the witness stand. "Why did he kill my husband for no reason?"
REUTERS