By Rich McKay
ATLANTA (Reuters) – A Georgia man accused of a shooting massacre at Atlanta-area day spas was set to appear before a judge on Monday to face four counts of felony murder and other charges in Fulton County, where the prosecutor plans to seek the death penalty.
Robert Aaron Long, 22, is accused of killing eight people, nearly all of them of Asian descent, at three spas in or near Atlanta. He has already pleaded guilty https://www.reuters.com/world/us/man-pleads-guilty-four-murders-atlanta-area-spa-shootings-2021-07-27 in four of the slayings in Cherokee County.
The attacks in March galvanized an awareness of a wave of anti-Asian bias and violence across the United States during the coronavirus pandemic, which is believed to have originated in China.
In a court hearing in Cherokee County last month, Long showed little emotion as he described how he purchased a firearm and a bottle of bourbon and set out to kill himself, claiming to feel remorseful for a self-proclaimed sex addiction.
Instead, he said he decided to carry out the spa shootings. Afterwards, he drove about 30 miles (50 km) south to Atlanta and attacked two other spas run by people of Asian descent, prosecutors say, killing eight people in the two counties.
Long received four sentences of life in prison without parole last month for the shootings of Delaina Ashley Yaun, 33; Paul Andre Michels, 54; Xiaojie Yan, 49; and Daoyou Feng, 44.
In Fulton County, he is charged with the killings of Yong Ae Yue, 63; Soon Chung Park, 74; Suncha Kim, 69; and Hyun Jung Grant, 51, at two Atlanta day spas.
On Monday, he will appear before Fulton County Superior Court Judge Ural Glanville in Atlanta on the four remaining counts of felony murder, where District Attorney Fani Willis has filed court papers declaring she will seek the death penalty.
Willis also filed court papers designating the case a hate crime based on race or gender.
(Reporting by Rich McKay in Atlanta; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
