Long is also accused of killing four others the same day at another spa in Cherokee County.
The March 16 attack raised fears of racist targeting nationwide amid a spate of widely publicized attacks on Asian Americans. It was quickly seen as a high-profile test of Georgia’s new hate-crime law, passed last year in the wake of the fatal shooting of Ahmaud Arbery — a 25-year-old Black man chased by White men who said they suspected Arbery of neighborhood break-ins. The defendants charged with murder in that February 2020 incident now face federal hate-crime charges.
Staff at the firm of J. Daran Burns, who represents Long, said Tuesday afternoon that Burns did not immediately have any comment.
Georgia’s hate-crime law will not affect Long’s potential penalties given the seriousness of his charges. Georgia mandates a sentence of at least two years for felony hate crimes. Proponents of hate-crime laws have argued that they can signal authorities take hateful attacks seriously and reassure targeted communities.
A hate-crime charge applies when a jury finds beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant chose a victim, group of victims or their property because of characteristics such as race, religion, national origin and gender. Almost every state has a hate-crime law, but the statutes are rarely used, experts say. The Atlanta spa shootings fueled calls to seek enhanced penalties and new momentum for hate-crime laws in the few states without them.
A Tuesday court filing indicated that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis intends to seek the death penalty and had notified a lawyer with the Office of the Capital Defender in Atlanta. The lawyer, Jerilyn Bell, declined to comment Tuesday.
On Tuesday, Long was also indicted on murder charges in Cherokee County, where he lives. Officials said Long began his rampage at Young’s Asian Massage north of Atlanta, before heading to two other businesses across the street from each other, Gold Spa and Aromatherapy Spa.
Early on after the spa shootings, officials in Cherokee County faced a backlash for comments that many saw as downplaying the potential role of race in the shootings, which coincided with heightened attention to anti-Asian racism amid scapegoating for the coronavirus pandemic. A county sheriff’s office official, Jay Baker, said the day after the attack that Long had claimed to have a “sexual addiction” and said he wanted to eliminate a “temptation.”
“He was pretty much fed up and kind of at the end of his rope. Yesterday was a really bad day for him and this is what he did,” Baker said. The framing early on in authorities’ investigations drew an outcry from those who saw the attack as inseparable from the race and gender of its victims.
“The shooter said it wasn’t racially motivated, but on the other hand, he’s going specifically to these spas where Asian women work precisely to serve the sexual fantasies of White males,” David Palumbo-Liu, a Stanford University professor and author of “Asian/American: Historical Crossings of a Racial Frontier,” previously told The Washington Post. “So to disentangle them is really to do a disservice to the fact that these things are so linked together.”
Atlanta police said Long frequented the two businesses targeted in the city, but they refrained from discussing potential motives as they worked on the case.
“Whatever the motivation was for this guy, we know that the majority of the victims were Asian,” Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms (D) said in March. “We also know that this is an issue that is happening across the country. It is unacceptable, it is hateful, and it has to stop.”
Long was apprehended the night of the shootings following a manhunt, aided by cooperation from his parents. Authorities said Long confessed to the killings and may have planned to carry out more violence.
Long was indicted Tuesday on charges of murder, felony murder, domestic terrorism, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony. The indictment names a fifth victim, Isis Escobar, whom Long is accused of pointing a handgun toward on March 16.
Elaborating on the domestic terrorism charge, the indictment says Long’s crimes involved “the intent to cause serious bodily harm and to kill individuals and groups of individuals, and with the intent to intimidate the civilian population.”
In Cherokee County, officials identified the four victims as Delaina Ashley Yaun, 33, of Acworth, Ga.; Paul Andre Michels, 54, of Atlanta; Xiaojie Tan, 49, of Kennesaw, Ga.; and Daoyou Feng, 44. A fifth person was wounded, according to police.
Mark Berman contributed to this report.
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